Amazon, founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, grew from an online bookstore into a global technology giant.
Bezos incorporated the company in Washington state in July 1994 and initially operated it under the name Cadabra. The business opened as an online bookstore in 1995 because books offered a very large selection for an internet-based catalogue. Amazon later expanded into many retail categories.
The company became much more than a retailer. Amazon Web Services, launched in the mid-2000s, supplies cloud-computing infrastructure, storage, databases, and other services. Amazon also operates Prime subscriptions, logistics networks, advertising services, and entertainment businesses.
Its enormous scale and several profitable divisions helped make Amazon one of the world's largest companies by market capitalization. People sometimes confuse market capitalization with annual sales or total assets. Market capitalization is the value investors assign to all outstanding shares, so it can change daily even when the underlying company has not changed fundamentally.