Amazon became the second U.S. company to surpass a US$1 trillion market capitalization in September 2018.
Amazon crossed the threshold on September 4, 2018, about one month after Apple achieved the same milestone. Its valuation reflected investor confidence in the company’s rapidly expanding online retail operation, cloud-computing division, advertising business, and subscription services.
The company began as an online bookstore founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994. It gradually expanded into music, video, electronics, logistics, devices, and business technology. Amazon Web Services, launched in the mid-2000s, became a particularly important source of growth and helped change how investors viewed the company.
A market-capitalization milestone does not mean that a company has one trillion dollars in cash. It is the theoretical value of all publicly traded shares at the prevailing market price, and it can change whenever the share price moves.