Amazon was the first company after Apple to reach a US$1 trillion market capitalization in 2018.
Amazon crossed the milestone on September 4, 2018, about a month after Apple. Jeff Bezos founded the company in 1994 as an online bookstore, and it began operations from his garage in Bellevue, Washington, in 1995.
The company expanded from books into a broad retail marketplace, logistics network, digital media business, and cloud-computing provider. Amazon Web Services became particularly important because it supplied infrastructure and services to businesses around the world.
The trillion-dollar milestone concerns equity value, not the amount of money Amazon had in the bank. Share price and the number of shares outstanding determine market capitalization, while revenue, profit, and cash are separate financial measures.