Amazon became the second U.S. company to exceed a $1 trillion market capitalization, after Apple.
Amazon crossed the threshold on September 4, 2018, about one month after Apple reached the same valuation. The milestone reflected investors’ expectations for continued expansion in online retail, cloud computing, digital advertising, and subscription services.
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 as an online bookstore. The company expanded into a broad marketplace and developed Amazon Web Services, which became a major cloud-computing business. AWS helped change how investors viewed Amazon, because the company was no longer valued only as a retailer.
The $1 trillion figure was an intraday market value, so Amazon did not permanently remain above that level at every subsequent moment. Alphabet, Microsoft, and other U.S. technology companies later reached similar valuations. The milestone also does not mean Amazon had $1 trillion in revenue or cash.