Amazon was the second U.S. company to reach a $1 trillion market capitalization, doing so in September 2018.
Its valuation followed a dramatic transformation from an online bookseller into a broad technology and retail company. Amazon’s businesses include online stores, advertising, subscriptions, logistics, devices, and Amazon Web Services, its cloud-computing division.
Apple reached the same milestone first, closing above $1 trillion in August 2018. Alphabet, Microsoft, and other large technology companies followed later. A market-cap milestone is based on share price multiplied by shares outstanding, so it does not mean Amazon had $1 trillion in cash or revenue.
Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, launched the company in 1994. The business initially operated under the name Cadabra before adopting Amazon, a name chosen to suggest scale and ambition. Its cloud division became an important source of operating income and investor interest.