Amazon was the first U.S. company after Apple to exceed a $1 trillion market capitalization, reaching the milestone in September 2018.
Amazon crossed the threshold on September 4, 2018, about one month after Apple. The move reflected investor confidence in its online retail business, fast-growing cloud division Amazon Web Services, advertising operations, and subscription ecosystem.
Amazon began as an online bookstore founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994. It expanded into a broad marketplace, logistics network, streaming business, smart-device platform, and cloud-services provider. AWS became especially important because it generated substantial revenue and operating income.
The milestone is sometimes described as an e-commerce achievement, but Amazon’s market value reflected several businesses. It also was not the first company worldwide to reach $1 trillion; Apple had already done so.