Amazon became the second company to exceed a US$1 trillion market capitalization, after Apple, in 2018.
Amazon crossed the threshold on 4 September 2018, about a month after Apple reached it. The milestone reflected investor expectations about Amazon’s expanding retail operations, cloud-computing business, digital advertising, logistics network, and subscription services.
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 as an online bookstore. The company later expanded into a broad marketplace selling products in many categories, while Amazon Web Services became a major provider of infrastructure and platform services for businesses and governments.
Amazon’s market value is not the same as its retail sales. Market capitalization reflects what investors collectively pay for its publicly traded shares. The figure can change substantially even when the company’s underlying operations have not changed on that same day.