Amazon

74 major milestones

American multinational technology company focused on e‑commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming, devices and AI. Founded by Jeff Bezos in Bellevue, Washington; grew from an online bookseller to one of the world's largest technology and retail companies.

Latest Valuation

$1,810,000,000,000

1 Funding Rounds

Company Timeline

Years 0-4

Amazon founded (as Cadabra)

Jeff Bezos incorporated the company (initially named Cadabra, Inc.) in Bellevue, Washington; started the business from his garage. Early team included Bezos, his then-wife and a few initial employees; parents invested seed capital.

Year 0 • 1994

Early sales ramp

Within two months of launch Amazon was selling roughly $20,000 per week.

Year 1 • 1995

Amazon launches online bookstore

Amazon.com publicly launched as an online bookseller selling to all 50 US states and dozens of countries. First book sold was Douglas Hofstadter's 'Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies'.

Year 1 • 1995

User-growth milestone: 180,000 active accounts

After its first full year of operation Amazon reported ~180,000 active user accounts.

Year 2 • 1996

1996 revenue reported (early growth)

Reported net sales for 1996 (early-stage revenue figure commonly cited).

Year 2 • 1996

User-growth milestone: 1,000,000 accounts

Amazon reported reaching roughly 1 million accounts by 1997 as it scaled rapidly after launch.

Year 3 • 1997

Initial public offering (IPO)

Amazon issued its IPO on NASDAQ (AMZN) at $18.00 per share, raising about $54 million.

Year 3 • 1997

Acquisition: IMDb

Amazon acquired the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), expanding into media-related assets.

Year 4 • 1998

Strategic expansion beyond books

Amazon announced expansion of its product catalog beyond books into music, videos, electronics and more (the start of 'The Everything Store' strategy).

Year 4 • 1998

Years 5-9

Time Person of the Year: Jeff Bezos

Time magazine named Jeff Bezos Person of the Year in recognition of Amazon's rapid growth and influence.

Year 5 • 1999

First quarterly profit (Q4 2001)

Amazon reported its first quarterly profit in Q4 2001 (reported as $0.01 EPS on revenues > $1B), a turning point after the dot-com crash.

Year 7 • 2001

First profitable fiscal year (2003)

Amazon reported its first full-year profit in 2003 (net income ≈ $35 million), after losses in prior years.

Year 9 • 2003

Product launch: A9.com (search & ad tech)

Amazon launched A9.com to develop search and advertising technologies.

Year 9 • 2003

Years 10-14

Acquisition: Joyo (China)

Amazon acquired Joyo, a Chinese online bookstore, for about $75 million; later rebranded as Amazon China.

Year 10 • 2004

Product launch: Amazon Prime

Amazon introduced Amazon Prime: unlimited two-day shipping for a flat annual fee (originally $79/year).

Year 11 • 2005

Product launch: Amazon Mechanical Turk

Amazon launched Mechanical Turk, a microtask crowd-sourcing platform exposing an API for human intelligence tasks.

Year 11 • 2005

Product launch: Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)

Amazon launched S3, offering scalable cloud object storage to developers and businesses—foundational for AWS revenue growth.

Year 12 • 2006

Product launch: Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)

Amazon launched EC2, providing elastic virtual compute capacity—crucial to building Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Year 12 • 2006

Product launch: Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA)

Amazon launched FBA, allowing third-party sellers to use Amazon's fulfillment and customer-service infrastructure.

Year 12 • 2006

Product launch: AmazonFresh (grocery service)

Amazon began AmazonFresh, delivering perishable and non-perishable groceries in select markets.

Year 13 • 2007

Product launch: Amazon Music

Amazon rolled out Amazon Music (online music store and locker), expanding digital media offerings.

Year 13 • 2007

Product launch: Kindle e-reader

Amazon launched the Kindle e-reader, initiating Amazon's hardware devices ecosystem (Kindle, later Fire, Echo).

Year 13 • 2007

Acquisition: Audible

Amazon acquired Audible, a leading producer/distributor of audiobooks and audio entertainment (commonly cited as 2008).

Year 14 • 2008

Years 15-19

Acquisition: Zappos

Amazon acquired online shoe and apparel retailer Zappos for approximately $850 million.

Year 15 • 2009

E‑book milestone: Kindle e-books outsell hardcovers

Amazon reported that e‑book sales for Kindle outnumbered hardcover sales on the platform—an inflection for digital reading.

Year 16 • 2010

Acquisition: Lovefilm (Europe)

Amazon acquired Lovefilm (European DVD rental and streaming service), expanding its media footprint in Europe.

Year 17 • 2011

Product rebrand: Amazon Instant Video

Amazon rebranded and expanded its video-on-demand service as Amazon Instant Video (later Prime Video), adding thousands of TV/movies.

Year 17 • 2011

Product launch: Amazon Appstore (Android)

Amazon launched the Amazon Appstore for Android devices and made it available in many countries.

Year 17 • 2011

Tax & job incentives: agreements with U.S. states (2012)

Amazon agreed to collect sales taxes in Nevada and Texas (starting July 1, 2012) and committed to create jobs/invest in local distribution centers (e.g., Texas: 2,500 jobs, $200M investment).

Year 18 • 2012

Acquisition: Kiva Systems

Amazon acquired robotics automation company Kiva Systems for about $775 million to automate warehouses.

Year 18 • 2012

Acquisition: Goodreads

Amazon acquired Goodreads, the social reading and book–review community, integrating reader data and social features.

Year 19 • 2013

International expansion: Amazon launches in India

Amazon began full operations and major investment in India, a key growth market for e-commerce.

Year 19 • 2013

Years 20-24

Acquisitions & domain purchase: .buy top-level domain

Amazon purchased the top-level domain .buy (2014) in auction for just over $4.5 million as part of digital property investments.

Year 20 • 2014

Product failure: Fire Phone write-down

Amazon's Fire Phone failed commercially; Amazon recorded a significant loss (~$170 million) and halted production the following year.

Year 20 • 2014

Product launch: Fire / Kindle Fire

Amazon launched the Fire tablet lineup (including Kindle Fire devices), extending its consumer hardware business.

Year 20 • 2014

Acquisition: Twitch (announced/closed 2014)

Amazon agreed to acquire game-streaming platform Twitch for around $970 million to enter live-streaming and gaming.

Year 20 • 2014

Product unveiling: Amazon Echo and Alexa

Amazon introduced Echo, a voice-controlled smart speaker running Alexa, launching Amazon into the smart-home and voice AI market.

Year 20 • 2014

First permanent physical retail store: Amazon Books

Amazon opened its first brick-and-mortar bookstore in Seattle (University Village), integrating online data and in-store merchandising.

Year 21 • 2015

Move: New Seattle HQ (Denny Triangle / 'Day 1' campus)

Amazon began moving employees into its new Denny Triangle campus (Tower I 'Doppler'), part of a multi-tower Seattle headquarters buildout.

Year 21 • 2015

Hardware & services expansion: Echo/Alexa ecosystem reaches mass adoption

By the mid‑2010s Echo/Alexa became a central piece of Amazon's consumer device and voice‑AI strategy (significant product & platform milestone).

Year 22 • 2016

Prime Air: first drone delivery (UK trial)

Amazon Prime Air completed its first public drone delivery trial in Cambridge, UK, demonstrating drone delivery capability.

Year 22 • 2016

Acquisition: Whole Foods Market announced

Amazon announced acquisition of Whole Foods Market (natural/organic grocery chain) for about $13.4–13.7 billion to expand physical retail presence.

Year 23 • 2017

Whole Foods deal approved

Whole Foods shareholders and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission approved Amazon's Whole Foods acquisition.

Year 23 • 2017

HQ2 search announced

Amazon announced a competition to select a second headquarters (HQ2) to house up to 50,000 employees in a major metro area.

Year 23 • 2017

Amazon Go opens to public (Seattle)

Amazon opened Amazon Go cashierless convenience store to the public (technology uses sensors and vision to auto-charge shoppers).

Year 24 • 2018

Retail experiment: Amazon 4‑Star stores launched

Amazon opened 4‑Star retail locations selling products rated 4 stars and up on Amazon.com (first announced Sept 27, 2018).

Year 24 • 2018

Amazon workforce expansion: 2017 hiring spike reported in 2018

Amazon disclosed that it had hired ~130,000 workers in 2017 and by the end of 2017 employed over ~566,000 people worldwide (rapid workforce scale).

Year 24 • 2018

Acquisition: PillPack (announced/closed 2018)

Amazon announced acquisition of online pharmacy PillPack, expanding into prescription pharmacy services.

Year 24 • 2018

Orders 20,000 Mercedes delivery vans

Amazon ordered 20,000 Mercedes‑Benz Sprinter vans as part of a last‑mile delivery program, expanding delivery logistics.

Year 24 • 2018

Market-cap milestone: $1 trillion

Amazon reached a market capitalization of about $1 trillion, joining an elite set of tech companies at that valuation.

Year 24 • 2018Valuation: $1,000,000,000,000

Minimum wage raised to $15/hr (U.S. & U.K.)

Amazon announced it would raise minimum hourly wage for U.S. and U.K. employees (including Whole Foods) to $15 effective Nov 1.

Year 24 • 2018

HQ2 finalists selected (NYC & Northern Virginia)

Amazon initially announced it would split HQ2 between Long Island City, NYC and Crystal City (Arlington), Northern Virginia.

Year 24 • 2018

Years 25-29

HQ2 New York plans cancelled

Amazon cancelled its plans to open the planned HQ2 in Long Island City due to local backlash; Virginia site remained.

Year 25 • 2019

25th anniversary

Amazon celebrated 25 years since founding (1994–2019).

Year 25 • 2019

U.S. retail e‑commerce sales milestone (2020)

Amazon generated approximately $386 billion in U.S. retail e‑commerce sales in 2020 (up 38% over 2019).

Year 26 • 2020

COVID-19 response: operations & hiring surge

During the pandemic Amazon paused acceptance of non‑essential third‑party shipments (Mar 17–Apr 10), hired ~175,000 warehouse/delivery staff and temporarily raised wages by $2/hr to handle surging demand.

Year 26 • 2020

Worker protests & firing of organizer

Staten Island warehouse workers staged walkouts over COVID safety; organizer Chris Smalls was subsequently fired—sparked national attention and criticism.

Year 26 • 2020

Prime subscribers milestone (~2021)

Amazon Prime membership reached roughly 200 million subscribers worldwide (commonly cited figure around 2021).

Year 27 • 2021

Acquisition announced: MGM (deal value)

Amazon and MGM agreed on a merger for approximately $8.45–8.5 billion, intended to add MGM's film and TV library to Prime Video.

Year 27 • 2021

Leadership change: Jeff Bezos steps down as CEO

Jeff Bezos announced he would step down as CEO effective July 2021 and transition to Executive Chairman; Andy Jassy was named CEO of Amazon.

Year 27 • 2021

R&D spending milestone (2022)

Amazon reported R&D expenditures of approximately $73 billion for 2022, making it a leader in corporate R&D spending.

Year 28 • 2022

Retail contraction: closures of Books, 4‑Star and Pop‑Up stores

Amazon announced it would close all 68 of its Books, 4‑Star and Pop Up physical stores in the U.S. and UK as part of refocus on grocery and fashion.

Year 28 • 2022

Acquisition closed: MGM

Amazon completed acquisition of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) after regulatory clearances, integrating MGM into Amazon's studios/org.

Year 28 • 2022

MGM leadership exits post‑acquisition

After the MGM acquisition, co‑heads Mike de Luca and Pam Abdy left the studio as part of integration changes.

Year 28 • 2022

Layoff announcement: ~10,000 roles

Amazon announced plans to cut about 10,000 corporate and technology roles beginning November 2022.

Year 28 • 2022

Layoff update: expands cuts to ~18,000

Amazon expanded layoffs to about 18,000 roles as part of broader cost-cutting and reorganization.

Year 29 • 2023

Profit milestone: net income 2023

Amazon reported net income (profit) of about $30.4 billion in 2023 (after a loss the prior year).

Year 29 • 2023

Employee milestone: >1 million warehouse workers globally

Amazon reported more than one million workers employed in warehouses around the world (warehouse workforce scale indicator).

Year 29 • 2023

Automation milestone: humanoid robot trials

Amazon began testing humanoid robots in warehouses to help automate selected tasks (e.g., moving boxes), signaling advancement in warehouse automation.

Year 29 • 2023

Additional layoffs: 9,000 jobs cut

Amazon announced elimination of an additional ~9,000 roles in March 2023 (bringing the year-to-date total to ~27,000).

Year 29 • 2023

Strategic partnership & investment: Anthropic

Amazon and AI startup Anthropic announced a strategic collaboration in which Amazon would invest up to $4 billion (including $1.25B immediately) and Anthropic would use AWS as primary cloud.

Year 29 • 2023

Delivery leadership claim (Nov 27, 2023)

Reported milestone: Amazon surpassed FedEx and UPS to become the #1 delivery company in the U.S. by volume (reported Nov 27, 2023).

Year 29 • 2023

Years 30-34

Product/pricing: Amazon Prime ad‑supported tier launched

Amazon launched a new lower-priced Amazon Prime tier supported by ads (announced/rolled out Jan 29, 2024).

Year 30 • 2024

Market capitalization (Feb 2024)

As of February 2024 Amazon's market capitalization was about $1.81 trillion (public market valuation).

Year 30 • 2024Valuation: $1,810,000,000,000