Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994, and it grew into one of the world's largest market-capitalization businesses.
Bezos established the company in Bellevue, Washington, in July 1994. It began as an online bookseller and expanded into a broad retail marketplace, cloud computing, digital media, advertising, devices, and logistics. The company was originally called Cadabra before adopting the Amazon name.
Amazon's market capitalization rose as investors valued the growth potential of its retail platform and Amazon Web Services. AWS became a major cloud-computing business and an important source of operating income, alongside the company's consumer operations.
Amazon went public in 1997. Its market cap has fluctuated with technology-sector sentiment, retail results, cloud growth, interest rates, and share-price changes. A high market cap does not mean every part of the business has the same profitability or growth rate.