Amazon joins Apple in the $1 trillion valuation club

Amazon

Not one to be left out, online retail megalith Amazon is now worth $1 trillion total market value, crossing the threshold during early afternoon on September 4. Amazon has achieved the milestone just weeks following Apple’s $1 trillion valuation.

We’d say that this valuation has been a long time coming, but Amazon was worth just $580 billion in comparison as of early 2018, according to CNN. Why the massive surge in valuation, then?

Explaining Amazon’s ascent

However, that doesn’t entirely explain why investors are so absolutely bullish on Amazon. As CNN opines, and we largely agree, it’s been Amazon’s consistent ability to carve out a place for itself in every industry it has attempted to invest in.

This has lately been achieved via acquisition, particularly in the cases of Whole Foods supermarkets in 2017 and smart security company Ring earlier this year. However, even more important to note is Amazon’s role as a data company.

Amazon has petabytes worth of data on its customers regardless of whether they’re subscribers to Amazon Prime (though, that helps immensely). If you’ve purchased something on Amazon or own one of its many Echo speakers or Fire tablets, then you’ve provided Amazon with data it has used in some capacity to improve its products and services – or better tailor its advertising – and therefore increase potential revenues and profits.

Let’s hope Amazon now takes this valuation and turns it into an even better product in the next few years.

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Joe Osborne

Joe Osborne is the Senior Technology Editor at Insider Inc. His role is to leads the technology coverage team for the Business Insider Shopping team, facilitating expert reviews, comprehensive buying guides, snap deals news and more. Previously, Joe was TechRadar's US computing editor, leading reviews of everything from gaming PCs to internal components and accessories. In his spare time, Joe is a renowned Dungeons and Dragons dungeon master – and arguably the nicest man in tech.