Amazon operates the large online retail business founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994.
Bezos founded Amazon in Bellevue, Washington, originally launching it as an online bookstore. The company expanded into many product categories, logistics, digital media, devices, and cloud computing.
Amazon Web Services became a particularly important business because it provides computing, storage, databases, and other infrastructure to organizations worldwide. The combination of retail scale and cloud growth helped Amazon become one of the world’s most valuable public companies.
Amazon’s market capitalization is not the same as its retail sales. Market cap measures the value investors assign to its shares, while revenue measures money generated from business activities during a period.