Amazon became the second U.S. company to reach a $1 trillion market capitalization in September 2018.
Amazon crossed the milestone on September 4, 2018, following Apple, which had reached $1 trillion a few weeks earlier. Investors valued Amazon not only for its online retail business but also for Amazon Web Services, advertising, subscriptions, logistics, and digital media.
Amazon Web Services, or AWS, began offering services in 2006 and became a major cloud-computing provider. Its profitability helped change how markets viewed Amazon, which had spent many years emphasizing growth and investment rather than traditional retail margins.
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 as an online bookstore. It expanded into a broad marketplace, while AWS developed into a separate technology engine. The $1 trillion figure describes the value of publicly traded shares and does not mean Amazon held $1 trillion in cash or generated that amount in sales.