Amazon became the first U.S. company founded in the 1990s to reach a $1 trillion market capitalization.
Amazon crossed the $1 trillion mark in September 2018, about a month after Apple became the first company overall to do so. The milestone came as investors valued Amazon’s rapid expansion beyond online bookselling into a broad technology and commerce ecosystem.
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 and began as an online bookstore. Its later growth included online retail, third-party marketplace services, Prime subscriptions, logistics, advertising, and Amazon Web Services, which became a major cloud-computing business.
The company’s market cap milestone should not be confused with its founding date or its initial public offering. Amazon went public in 1997, several years after its founding, and its valuation changed dramatically as its businesses expanded.