Amazon was the first publicly traded business to reach a $1 trillion market capitalization in 2018 after Apple.
Amazon crossed the $1 trillion threshold on September 4, 2018, about one month after Apple reached the same milestone. The company’s share price had risen substantially as investors valued its e-commerce operations, cloud-computing business, advertising, and subscription services.
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 and began as an online bookstore. It expanded into a broad retail marketplace, while Amazon Web Services became a major provider of computing, storage, and database infrastructure for businesses and governments.
The $1 trillion milestone referred to Amazon’s equity value on the stock market. It did not mean Amazon had earned or held $1 trillion in cash. Market capitalization can rise because investors expect future growth, even when a company’s current sales and profits are much lower than its valuation.