Amazon became the second company to surpass a $1 trillion market capitalization, following Apple, in September 2018.
Amazon crossed the milestone on September 4, 2018, about a month after Apple became the first public company to reach $1 trillion. Its stock price had risen as investors valued the company’s expanding online retail business, Amazon Web Services, advertising operations, and subscription products.
Amazon’s path differed from Apple’s. It began as an online bookseller founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, then expanded into a broad marketplace, cloud-computing provider, logistics network, and media business. Amazon Web Services became especially important to the company’s profits.
Market capitalization records describe the value investors assign to publicly traded shares. They do not rank companies by sales alone, and a company can have enormous revenue while carrying lower market value than a faster-growing competitor.