Amazon owns AWS, the cloud business that helped it become a trillion-dollar company.
Amazon first exceeded a $1 trillion market capitalization in September 2018. Its retail marketplace made the company famous, but Amazon Web Services became a major source of operating income and an important reason investors valued the group so highly.
AWS provides computing power, storage, databases, networking, and other services over the internet. It grew from infrastructure Amazon had built to support its own retail operations and became a commercial cloud platform launched in the mid-2000s. Businesses, governments, and developers use AWS without purchasing equivalent physical data-center systems themselves.
Amazon’s valuation is not the same as AWS’s standalone value because AWS is part of the wider company. The group also includes online stores, advertising, Prime subscriptions, devices, and logistics. Amazon’s share price therefore reflects expectations for several connected businesses rather than retail alone.