Amazon became the second U.S. company to exceed a $1 trillion market capitalization.
Amazon passed the threshold in September 2018, shortly after Apple became the first U.S. company to do so. The milestone reflected investor confidence in Amazon’s rapid expansion from online retail into cloud computing, logistics, digital advertising, devices, and subscription services. Amazon Web Services was especially important because its profitability helped support the economics of the broader company.
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 as an online bookstore and began selling books from a garage in Bellevue, Washington. It later expanded into a general marketplace and built a global fulfillment network. The company’s market capitalization has often been compared with its revenue because Amazon historically reinvested heavily rather than maximizing near-term profit. That makes market value a measure of expected future performance as well as current results.