Amazon owns Amazon Web Services, a cloud-computing business that has become a major driver of the company’s market value.
Amazon Web Services, usually called AWS, began offering services publicly in 2006. It provides computing power, storage, databases, networking, and other tools that organizations can rent over the internet instead of building all the infrastructure themselves.
Amazon’s retail operations made the company famous, but AWS became especially important to investors because cloud services can produce substantial operating profit. Market capitalization reflects expectations about the whole company, so AWS can influence how investors value Amazon even though online retail remains central to its identity.
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 as an online bookstore. It expanded into a broad marketplace, logistics, entertainment, devices, advertising, and cloud computing.