Amazon became the second publicly traded company to exceed a $1 trillion market capitalization.
Amazon passed the $1 trillion mark on September 4, 2018, about one month after Apple became the first company to do so. The milestone reflected investor confidence in Amazon’s expanding e-commerce business, cloud-computing division, advertising operations, and logistics network.
Amazon began as an online bookseller founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 and gradually expanded into a broad technology and retail company. Its cloud division, Amazon Web Services, became an especially important source of revenue and operating profit.
Market capitalization measures the value of the company’s publicly traded equity, not the value of goods sold through its website. Amazon’s achievement was also distinct from an IPO valuation: it occurred years after the company went public, as its share price rose and its business developed.