Amazon was the second U.S. publicly traded company to reach a $1 trillion market capitalization.
Amazon crossed the threshold on September 4, 2018, about a month after Apple achieved the same milestone. Its share price had risen dramatically as investors valued the company’s combination of online retail, cloud computing, digital advertising, and subscription services.
Amazon began as an online bookseller founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994. Its expansion into many product categories helped establish a global marketplace, while Amazon Web Services became a major cloud-computing business after launching in 2006. Those businesses gave Amazon a much broader financial profile than a traditional retailer.
The $1 trillion figure describes the value investors assigned to Amazon’s equity at that moment. It is not the company’s sales total or the value of all goods sold through its marketplace. Amazon’s market capitalization has moved substantially since 2018 as its share price changed.