Amazon owns Amazon Web Services, the cloud business that helped make Amazon one of the world’s most valuable companies.
Amazon Web Services, commonly called AWS, began in the early 2000s and officially launched its first services in 2006. It provides computing power, storage, databases, networking, and other online infrastructure to businesses, governments, and developers.
Amazon began as an online bookstore founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994. It later expanded into general e-commerce, logistics, digital media, devices, advertising, and cloud computing. AWS became a major source of operating income even though Amazon is best known to consumers for retail.
AWS is a business segment of Amazon, not a separate publicly traded company. This distinction matters when comparing market capitalization: investors value Amazon as a whole, including retail, advertising, logistics, and cloud operations.