Amazon became the second U.S. company to close a trading day above a $1 trillion market capitalization on September 4, 2018.
The milestone came about one month after Apple reached the same closing valuation. Amazon’s share price had climbed dramatically during the 2010s as its retail business expanded internationally and its cloud-computing division, Amazon Web Services, became a major source of growth.
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 as an online bookstore. It later developed into a broad technology and commerce company selling goods, operating a marketplace, providing cloud infrastructure, and producing entertainment. Its $1 trillion milestone therefore reflected more than retail sales alone.
The company’s valuation is based on publicly traded shares, so it changes continually during market hours. A company can briefly cross a threshold intraday without closing above it.