Amazon was the second U.S. company to exceed a $1 trillion market capitalization, following Apple, in September 2018.
Amazon’s shares crossed the threshold on September 4, 2018, as investors valued the company’s combination of online retail, cloud computing, digital advertising, and subscription services. Its Amazon Web Services division was especially important because cloud infrastructure generated strong growth and high operating margins.
The milestone came roughly two decades after Amazon’s 1997 initial public offering. The company began primarily as an online bookseller, then expanded into a broad retail marketplace and a major technology platform.
Amazon’s trillion-dollar event is sometimes confused with its later pandemic-era surge or with the much larger market-cap records set by Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia. Market capitalization changes with share prices, so crossing a round-number threshold does not mean the company received that amount of cash.