Amazon became the second publicly traded company to reach a US$1 trillion market capitalization in August 2018.
Amazon crossed the threshold on September 4, 2018, roughly one month after Apple became the first company to do so. The achievement followed a major rise in Amazon’s share price as investors valued its online retail operation, cloud-computing division, advertising business, and international expansion.
The calculation used for the milestone was share price multiplied by shares outstanding. It therefore measured the stock market’s valuation of Amazon, rather than the amount of money in the company’s bank accounts or its yearly sales.
Amazon’s cloud subsidiary, Amazon Web Services, became an especially important part of the company’s financial story. The company is also frequently confused with Alibaba when discussing major technology IPOs: Amazon went public in 1997, while Alibaba’s 2014 offering was the largest IPO at that time.