Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 and later became one of the world’s largest companies by market capitalization.
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in Bellevue, Washington, in 1994. The business began as an online bookstore and launched its website in 1995, before expanding into many categories of consumer goods.
Amazon’s growth came from combining retail scale with logistics, subscriptions, advertising, and cloud computing. Amazon Web Services, launched in 2006, became a major business by renting computing, storage, and other infrastructure to organizations around the world.
Amazon is sometimes described only as a retailer, but its market value reflects several businesses. It also differs from Alibaba, another major online-commerce company, because Amazon’s largest operations are centered in the United States and other international markets rather than China.