Amazon became the second publicly traded company to reach a $1 trillion market capitalization, in September 2018.
Its shares crossed the threshold about a month after Apple achieved the same milestone. Amazon’s market value reflected the rapid expansion of its online retail business, its cloud-computing division Amazon Web Services, and its growing logistics and subscription operations.
Amazon began as an online bookseller founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994. Over time, it expanded into a broad technology and commerce company. AWS became particularly important because cloud infrastructure generated substantial revenue and operating profit beyond the company’s retail activity.
Market capitalization is not the same as annual sales or assets. It is the value assigned by the stock market to all outstanding shares. Amazon later split its stock 20-for-1 in 2022, changing the per-share price but not, by itself, changing the company’s overall market capitalization.