Amazon surpassed a $1 trillion market capitalization in 2018 through its online retail and cloud businesses.
Amazon crossed the $1 trillion valuation threshold on September 4, 2018, following Apple’s earlier achievement that same year. Investors valued Amazon not only for its online marketplace but also for its rapidly expanding cloud-computing division, Amazon Web Services.
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 as an online bookstore. The company later expanded into general merchandise, digital content, logistics, devices, advertising, and cloud infrastructure. This diversification helped change how investors assessed the company compared with a traditional retailer.
Amazon’s market capitalization is based on its publicly traded shares and fluctuates with the stock price. Revenue, operating income, and market value are different measures. A company can have enormous sales while investors assign it a lower market capitalization, or it can have a high valuation based on expectations of future growth.