Amazon became the second company to reach a US$1 trillion market capitalization in 2018.
Amazon crossed the milestone on September 4, 2018, about one month after Apple became the first company to do so. Investors had rewarded Amazon for expanding beyond online retail into cloud computing, digital advertising, logistics, streaming, and subscription services.
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 as an online bookstore. It later broadened its product range and developed Amazon Web Services, whose cloud infrastructure became a major source of operating profit and an important part of the company’s valuation.
The milestone refers to equity market capitalization, not the total value of goods sold through Amazon’s marketplace. Third-party sellers conduct a large share of marketplace transactions, so Amazon’s gross merchandise volume and its own reported revenue are different measures.