Amazon (company)

This article is about the multinational technology company. For other companies, see Amazon (disambiguation) § Businesses and organizations.

Amazon.com, Inc.
Amazon
FormerlyCadabra, Inc. (1994–1995)
Company typePublic
ISINUS0231351067
Industry
FoundedJuly 5, 1994; 30 years ago (1994-07-05), in Bellevue, Washington, U.S.
FounderJeff Bezos
Headquarters
Seattle, Washington and Arlington, Virginia
,
U.S.
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Products
Services
RevenueIncrease US$574.8 billion (2023)
Increase US$36.85 billion (2023)
Increase US$30.43 billion (2023)
Total assetsIncrease US$527.9 billion (2023)
Total equityIncrease US$201.9 billion (2023)
OwnerJeff Bezos (8.92%)
Number of employees
≈ 1,525,000 (2023)
Subsidiaries
List
Websiteamazon.com
Footnotes / references
[1][2][3][4]

Amazon.com, Inc.,[1] doing business as Amazon (/ˈæməzɒn/, AM-ə-zon; UK also /ˈæməzən/, AM-ə-zən), is an American multinational technology company engaged in e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence.[5] Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in Bellevue, Washington,[6] the company originally started as an online marketplace for books but gradually expanded its offerings to include a wide range of product categories, referred to as "The Everything Store".[7] Today, Amazon is considered one of the Big Five American technology companies, the other four being Alphabet,[a] Apple, Meta,[b] and Microsoft.

The company has multiple subsidiaries, including Amazon Web Services, providing cloud computing; Zoox, a self-driving car division; Kuiper Systems, a satellite Internet provider; and Amazon Lab126, a computer hardware R&D provider. Other subsidiaries include Ring, Twitch, IMDb, and Whole Foods Market. Its acquisition of Whole Foods in August 2017 for US$13.4 billion substantially increased its market share and presence as a physical retailer.[8] Amazon also distributes a variety of downloadable and streaming content through its Amazon Prime Video, MGM+, Amazon Music, Twitch, Audible and Wondery[9] units. It publishes books through its publishing arm, Amazon Publishing, film and television content through Amazon MGM Studios, including the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio, which was acquired in March 2022, and owns Brilliance Audio and Audible, which produce and distribute audiobooks, respectively. Amazon also produces consumer electronics—most notably, Kindle e-readers, Echo devices, Fire tablets, and Fire TVs.

Amazon has a reputation as a disruptor of industries through technological innovation and aggressive reinvestment of profits into capital expenditures.[10][11][12][13] As of 2023, it is the world's largest online retailer and marketplace, smart speaker provider, cloud computing service through AWS,[14] live-streaming service through Twitch, and Internet company as measured by revenue and market share.[15] In 2021, it surpassed Walmart as the world's largest retailer outside of China, driven in large part by its paid subscription plan, Amazon Prime, which has close to 200 million subscribers worldwide.[16][17] It is the second-largest private employer in the United States[18] and the second-largest company in the World and in the U.S. by revenue as of 2024.[19] As of October 2024, Amazon is the 12th-most visited website in the world and 84% of its traffic comes from the United States.[20][21] Amazon is also the global leader in research and development spending, with R&D expenditure of US$73 billion in 2022.[22] Amazon has been criticized on various grounds, including but not limited to customer data collection practices, a toxic work culture, censorship, tax avoidance, and anti-competitive practices.

  1. ^ a b "Amazon.com, Inc. 2023 Form 10-K Annual Report". US Securities and Exchange Commission. February 2, 2024. Archived from the original on February 3, 2024. Retrieved February 3, 2024.
  2. ^ "California Secretary of State Business Search". Secretary of State of California. Archived from the original on February 23, 2018. Retrieved October 26, 2018.
  3. ^ "Amazon.com, Inc. 2022 Proxy Statement". US Securities and Exchange Commission. April 14, 2022. Archived from the original on July 8, 2022. Retrieved July 8, 2022.
  4. ^ Reuter, Dominick (July 30, 2021). "1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee". Business Insider. Archived from the original on February 3, 2022. Retrieved February 4, 2022.
  5. ^ "Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos". PBS. Archived from the original on January 16, 2020. Retrieved February 15, 2020.
  6. ^ Guevara, Natalie (November 17, 2020). "Amazon's John Schoettler has helped change how we think of corporate campuses". Puget Sound Business Journal. Archived from the original on April 17, 2021. Retrieved March 9, 2021.
  7. ^ Kakutani, Michiko (October 28, 2013). "Selling as Hard as He Can". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on October 29, 2013. Retrieved December 20, 2021.
  8. ^ "Amazon and Whole Foods Market Announce Acquisition to Close This Monday, Will Work Together to Make High-Quality, Natural and Organic Food Affordable for Everyone" (Press release). Business Wire. August 24, 2017. Archived from the original on September 13, 2021. Retrieved September 13, 2021.
  9. ^ Carman, Ashley (December 30, 2020). "Amazon buys Wondery, setting itself up to compete against Spotify for podcast domination". The Verge. Archived from the original on September 29, 2023. Retrieved March 16, 2024.
  10. ^ Furth, John F. (May 18, 2018). "Why Amazon and Jeff Bezos Are So Successful at Disruption". Entrepreneur. Archived from the original on August 26, 2022. Retrieved May 16, 2019.
  11. ^ Bylund, Per (August 29, 2017). "Amazon's Lesson About Disruption: Rattle Any Market You Can". Entrepreneur. Archived from the original on March 28, 2022. Retrieved May 16, 2019.
  12. ^ "How to compete with Amazon". Fortune. Archived from the original on September 27, 2022. Retrieved September 27, 2022.
  13. ^ "Reinvesting for Growth – Why Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is Undervalued Even in this Market". Yahoo Finance. Archived from the original on September 27, 2022. Retrieved September 27, 2022.
  14. ^ "Microsoft Cloud Revenues Leap; Amazon is Still Way Out in Front". Reno, Nevada: Synergy Research Group. October 29, 2014. Archived from the original on May 4, 2019. Retrieved July 2, 2015.
  15. ^ Jopson, Barney (July 12, 2011). "Amazon urges California referendum on online tax". Financial Times. Archived from the original on July 14, 2011. Retrieved August 4, 2011.
  16. ^ "Amazon Prime now has 200 million members, jumping 50 million in one year". Yahoo News. April 15, 2021. Archived from the original on January 22, 2022. Retrieved December 20, 2021.
  17. ^ Spangler, Todd (April 15, 2021). "Amazon Prime Tops 200 Million Members, Jeff Bezos Says". Variety. Archived from the original on April 15, 2021. Retrieved February 14, 2022.
  18. ^ Cheng, Evelyn (September 23, 2016). "Amazon climbs into list of top five largest US stocks by market cap". CNBC. Archived from the original on May 10, 2019. Retrieved February 20, 2019.
  19. ^ "Fortune Global 500". Fortune. Retrieved August 19, 2024.
  20. ^ "Top Websites Ranking". Similarweb. Archived from the original on February 10, 2022. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
  21. ^ "amazon.com". similarweb.com. Archived from the original on October 24, 2022. Retrieved January 8, 2024.
  22. ^ Intelligence, fDi. "Top 100 global innovation leaders". www.fdiintelligence.com. Retrieved June 16, 2024.


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