Amazon was the second publicly traded company to surpass a US$1 trillion market capitalization, after Apple.
Amazon crossed the threshold on September 4, 2018, roughly one month after Apple reached it. Its valuation was driven by the scale of its online retail business, the rapid expansion of Amazon Web Services, and investor expectations for continued growth.
The company began as an online bookseller in 1994 and expanded into a broad marketplace selling goods worldwide. AWS became a major cloud-computing business, while Prime subscriptions, advertising, logistics, and devices added further revenue streams.
A market cap is the value assigned by the stock market to all outstanding shares. It is different from annual sales, profits, or total assets. Amazon’s trillion-dollar milestone therefore measured investor valuation, not the amount of money in its bank account.