Amazon owns AWS, the cloud platform founded in 2006 as Amazon’s web-services division.
Amazon Web Services began by offering infrastructure services that let customers rent computing power, storage, and other technology over the internet. Instead of buying and maintaining all their own servers, businesses could use AWS resources on demand and pay according to usage. The model helped popularize cloud computing.
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 as an online bookstore. It expanded into a broad e-commerce marketplace, logistics network, digital media company, device maker, and cloud-services provider. AWS became a major business unit and serves startups, governments, universities, and large corporations.
AWS is not a separate publicly traded company. It is part of Amazon, so investors value AWS together with Amazon’s retail, advertising, subscription, and other operations. This is why Amazon’s market capitalization reflects several businesses rather than only its online-shopping operation. AWS’s launch date is also distinct from Amazon’s founding date: Amazon began in 1994, while AWS launched its first services in the 2000s.