Amazon became the fourth U.S. company to reach a $1 trillion market capitalization in 2018.
Amazon crossed the threshold on September 4, 2018, following Apple, Microsoft, and Alphabet. The milestone reflected the company’s enormous e-commerce operation, fast-growing cloud business, advertising activities, and subscription services.
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 as an online bookstore. The company expanded into a general marketplace and later built Amazon Web Services, whose cloud infrastructure became one of its most profitable and strategically important businesses.
Being the fourth U.S. company to cross $1 trillion does not mean Amazon was the fourth-largest company in every measure. Rankings based on revenue, profit, employees, assets, and market capitalization can produce very different results.