Amazon became the first company after Apple to reach a $1 trillion market value among major U.S. technology companies.
Amazon crossed the landmark in September 2018, shortly after Apple. It began as an online bookstore founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 and expanded into general e-commerce, logistics, digital media, devices, and cloud computing.
Amazon Web Services became a particularly important source of profit and a major reason investors valued the company so highly. The company’s retail business operates with enormous sales volume, while AWS supplies infrastructure and computing services to organizations around the world.
Amazon’s market-cap achievement is sometimes attributed only to online shopping, but that overlooks the importance of AWS and other businesses. The company’s stock has also undergone splits, so market capitalization—not the unadjusted share price—is the correct measure for comparisons.