Founding Amazon and Scaling E-Commerce
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 in Bellevue, Washington, after leaving a Wall Street hedge fund job and relocating to Seattle to launch an online bookstore source. The company went public in 1997 and expanded into a multi-category e-commerce platform, using a long-term growth strategy focused on low prices, fast delivery, and a vast selection of products source.
Amazon grew from a single online store into the world's largest online retailer by revenue, driven by Prime membership, third-party seller services, and logistics infrastructure source. By 2023, Amazon generated more than 570 billion U.S. dollars in annual revenue and employed over 1.5 million people worldwide, making it one of the largest private employers on Earth source.
Amazon Web Services and the Cloud Business
Launch and Growth of AWS
Amazon Web Services launched in 2006 with simple storage and computing services, later expanding into a broad cloud platform used by startups, enterprises, and governments source. AWS became the primary profit engine for Amazon, contributing the majority of the company's operating profit despite representing a smaller share of total revenue source.
AWS operates data centers across dozens of countries and offers more than 200 cloud services, including computing, databases, machine learning, and security source. As of 2024, AWS remains the global leader in cloud infrastructure by market share, powering a large share of the internet's backend services and enabling Amazon's high-margin recurring revenue streams source.
