Amazon operates Amazon Web Services, which launched in 2006.
AWS began by offering infrastructure services over the internet, including storage and computing capacity that customers could rent instead of buying and maintaining all the hardware themselves. Its early services included Amazon Simple Storage Service and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud.
The cloud division expanded into databases, analytics, networking, machine learning, security, and developer tools. It serves startups, governments, universities, and large enterprises around the world.
People sometimes assume AWS is a separate public company because it has its own brand and leadership structure. It is instead a business segment of Amazon.com, Inc. Its scale and profitability have been important parts of Amazon’s overall corporate story and market valuation.