Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 as an online bookstore initially called Cadabra.
Bezos incorporated the business in July 1994 after leaving his job at the investment firm D. E. Shaw. He soon changed the name after a lawyer misheard “Cadabra” as “cadaver.” He chose Amazon, evoking the enormous South American river and suggesting scale.
The website opened in July 1995, selling books because they offered a vast selection that a physical shop could not easily stock. Amazon’s early headquarters were in Bellevue, Washington, while its first fulfillment operation was established in a garage in nearby Seattle.
The company expanded beyond books into electronics, household goods, cloud computing, entertainment, and logistics. It is often called an online retailer, but Amazon Web Services became a major separate business. The founding year refers to Bezos’s company formation, not the public launch of the website.