Amazon is the parent company of Amazon Web Services, commonly called AWS.
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 as an online bookstore, and the company began operating on the web in 1995. It later expanded into many product categories, logistics, digital media, devices, and cloud computing.
AWS launched in 2006 with services that let organizations rent computing power, storage, and other infrastructure over the internet. Its customers include businesses, governments, and software developers.
A common mix-up is treating AWS as a separate publicly traded company. AWS is a business segment of Amazon, so investors generally value it through Amazon’s consolidated stock rather than through a standalone AWS share listing.