Amazon, founded in 1994 as an online bookstore, became one of the world’s largest companies by market capitalization.
Jeff Bezos established the company as Cadabra, Inc., before it adopted the Amazon name. The website launched in 1995, initially selling books online. Amazon then expanded into general merchandise, logistics, digital media, devices, advertising, and cloud computing.
Its market value grew alongside the scale and profitability of Amazon Web Services, which became a major cloud-infrastructure business. Amazon’s share price has also been affected by investment spending, delivery costs, and consumer-demand trends. Market capitalization measures the value of its publicly traded equity, not the value of every item sold through its marketplace.