Amazon

Amazon.com, Inc., commonly known as Amazon, is an American electronic commerce and cloud computing company based in Seattle, Washington that was founded by Jeff Bezos on July 5, 1994.

Amazon has separate retail websites for the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Australia, Brazil, Japan, China, India, and Mexico. In 2016, Dutch, Polish, and Turkish language versions of the German Amazon website were also launched. Amazon also offers international shipping of some of its products to certain other countries.

Amazon is the fourth most valuable public company in the world (behind only Apple, Alphabet, and Microsoft), the largest Internet company by revenue in the world, and after Walmart, the second largest employer in the United States. In 2017, Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market for $13.4 billion, which vastly increased Amazon's presence as a brick-and-mortar retailer. The acquisition was interpreted by some as a direct attempt to challenge Walmart's traditional retail stores. In 2018, for the first time, Jeff Bezos released in Amazon's shareholder letter the number of Amazon Prime subscribers, which at 100 million, is approximately 64% of households in the United States.

Amazon.com's product lines available at its website include several media (books, DVDs, music CDs, videotapes and software), apparel, baby products, consumer electronics, beauty products, gourmet food, groceries, health and personal-care items, industrial & scientific supplies, kitchen items, jewelry, watches, lawn and garden items, musical instruments, sporting goods, tools, automotive items and toys & games.

Amazon.com is the eighth-largest private employer in the United States (341,400 employees) and by revenue it is the largest internet company in the world.

 

Amazon owns over 40 subsidiaries, including Zappos, Shopbop, Diapers.com, Kiva Systems (now Amazon Robotics), Audible, Goodreads, Teachstreet and IMDb. 

 

Some of Amazon's biggest acquisitions are as follows-

    • In 1998, Amazon bought Junglee for $280M
    • On January 31, 2008 Amazon.com acquired Audible for about $300 million
    • In July 2009, Amazon acquired Zappos in an all-stock deal worth around $1.2 billion.
    • On Aug 2014  Amazon acquired Twitch for $970 million
    • In 2017, Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market for $13.4 billion
    • Amazon acquired Ring in Feb 2018 for an estimated value of between $1.2 billion and $1.8 billion
    • On 28 March 2017, Amazon confirmed it's acquisition of Souq.com for $580M.

 

  • Year founded: 1994
  • Funding Info: $108M in 2 funding rounds/ Amazon has acquired over 80 organizations as well as made over 60 investments!
  • Yearly Revenue: $141.92B (2018)
  • Employee Size: 10,001+
  • Business Valuation: Mkt Cap: $804.60B as of Feb 13, 2019/ Total Assets: $162.648B (2018)
  • City/Town: Seattle
  • State: Washington
  • Country: United States
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