Amazon became the second U.S. company to reach a $1 trillion market capitalization in September 2018.
Amazon’s valuation crossed $1 trillion on September 4, 2018, about a month after Apple reached the milestone. The move reflected rapid growth in online retail, cloud computing, digital advertising, and subscription services.
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 as an online bookstore, but it expanded into a broad technology and commerce company. Amazon Web Services became a particularly important business because it provides computing and storage infrastructure to organizations worldwide.
The milestone is sometimes confused with Amazon’s annual sales figures or its initial public offering. Market capitalization is not the amount of money a company has raised; it is the market value of all outstanding shares at a given share price.