Amazon became the first company to lose $1 trillion in market value during a 2022 sell-off.
The decline reflected a broad fall in technology and growth-company share prices. Investors reacted to rising interest rates, weaker economic expectations, and concerns about the cost of expansion. Because Amazon had reached a very large valuation, a substantial percentage decline translated into an unusually large dollar loss.
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 as an online bookseller. The company later expanded into general e-commerce, logistics, digital media, advertising, and cloud computing through Amazon Web Services.
Losing market value does not mean that a company paid out $1 trillion or lost that amount in cash. It describes the change in the stock-market value of all outstanding shares. Amazon’s operating businesses continued after the valuation decline.