Amazon became the second U.S. corporation to reach a $1 trillion market capitalization in August 2018.
Amazon crossed the threshold on August 30, 2018, several weeks after Apple. The achievement followed years of rapid growth in online retail, cloud computing through Amazon Web Services, digital media, and logistics.
The term “market capitalization” describes the total market value of a company’s publicly traded shares. It does not mean that Amazon had $1 trillion in cash or revenue. Share prices can move the market-cap figure even when a company’s underlying operations have not changed that day.
Amazon began as an online bookseller in 1994. Its expansion into many product categories and AWS transformed it into one of the world’s most valuable companies. Alphabet and Microsoft later joined the trillion-dollar group.