Amazon became the second U.S. company to exceed a $1 trillion market capitalization in 2018.
Amazon crossed the milestone in September 2018, about a month after Apple became the first U.S. company to reach it. Investors had rewarded Amazon’s rapid growth in online retail, cloud computing, advertising, subscriptions, and logistics.
The milestone is tied to Amazon’s publicly traded shares and therefore changes with the stock price. It does not mean Amazon had $1 trillion in revenue or profit. The company’s cloud division, Amazon Web Services, became especially important to its financial profile and helped distinguish Amazon from a conventional retailer.
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 as an online bookstore. Its expansion into many product categories and digital services made it one of the companies most associated with the rise of large-cap technology stocks.