Amazon founded AWS, the cloud-computing business that helped make it one of the world’s largest companies by market capitalization.
Amazon Web Services launched in 2006, offering computing, storage, and other internet infrastructure services on demand. Instead of requiring customers to buy and maintain all their own servers, AWS allowed them to rent technological resources and scale usage as needed.
Amazon originally developed much of the underlying infrastructure to support its online retail operations. The company then turned those capabilities into a separate commercial service. AWS became a major source of Amazon’s operating income, even though retail remains the part of the company most familiar to consumers.
AWS is often mistaken for a separate publicly traded company. It is a business segment of Amazon.com, Inc., so it does not have its own independent market capitalization or stock ticker.