A timeline of Amazon's evolution from bookstore to global powerhouse

After a cross-country move from New York City to the Seattle area, Jeff Bezos founds the company on July 5, 1994, working out of the garage of a rented house in Bellevue, Washington. Originally called Cadabra (as in "abracadabra"), the company is renamed Amazon before its website goes live. Amazon is one of the first online bookstores, born of Bezos' idea to capitalize on the internet's 2,300% annual growth.

Amazon's website (designed with help from Amazon's first employee, Shel Kaphan) spends months in beta, with friends, family, and early testers placing orders to help troubleshoot the system. The first customer order, placed in April 1995, is a copy of "Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought" by Douglas R. Hofstadter. On July 16, 1995, Amazon.com officially opens to the public.

In its earliest days, Amazon operates out of Bezos' garage. A small team takes turns packing boxes and working from desks made from doors. After its first partial year and $511,000 in sales, Amazon relocates to a warehouse south of downtown Seattle.

By the end of 1996, Amazon has amassed a whopping $15.7 million in revenue. Now offering 2.5 million titles and employing 151 people, Amazon moves its corporate offices to central Seattle and its warehouse to a 93,000-square-foot building.

On May 15, 1997, Bezos takes Amazon public. With an initial offering of 3 million shares priced at $18, Amazon's stock climbs as high as $30 on its first day before closing at $23.50. The initial public offering raises $54 million.

From its first weeks, Amazon makes sales in the tens of thousands of dollars. By the end of 1997, however, the company is still not profitable. Bezos explains to investors that he plans to defer profitability for up to five years to work on building infrastructure and technology. While this puts investors on edge, it doesn't scare them away entirely. In November 1997, Amazon opens the first of its fulfillment centers in Delaware.

At the end of 1997, Jeff Bezos hand-delivers Amazon's one-millionth order, a major milestone for the company. The order is placed by a customer in Japan, who purchases a Microsoft Windows NT manual and a biography of Princess Diana.

When he began Amazon, Bezos made a list of 20 products he thought would sell well over the internet. Books won out. He never saw Amazon as simply a bookstore, however, but a platform that sold a range of items. In 1998, the company takes its first foray into offering music and videos.

Bezos dips his toe in international waters in 1998. After acquiring booksellers in the United Kingdom and Germany that spring, Amazon relaunches them as Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de in October. The move lets Amazon sell to customers abroad while keeping costs low and inventory high.

By December 1999, Amazon has shipped more than 20 million items to all 50 states and more than 150 countries around the world. Time magazine honors this accomplishment by naming Jeff Bezos its Person of the Year. He's dubbed the "king of cybercommerce" and is the fourth-youngest person to be recognized by the magazine (35 at the time of publication).

Amazon makes the official transition from "bookstore" to "everything store." To acknowledge the company's change in focus, Amazon unveils a new logo. The iconic "smile" logo, designed by Turner Duckworth, replaces the abstract rendering of the Amazon River (which inspired the company's name).

Amazon stays above the fallout of the dot-com bubble burst that has affected competitors for months. In January 2001, however, it finally begins to feel the effects. Amazon lays off 1,300 employees, closes a Seattle call center and a distribution center, and downsizes operations at its Seattle warehouse in the same month. Investors worry whether the company will survive.

In 2002, Amazon begins selling clothes. The company's millions of users help it gain a foothold in the fashion industry. Amazon partners with 400 apparel brands in a bid to appeal to a diverse range of customers.

Amazon squeaked out its first quarterly profit at the end of 2001, but 2003 is the first full year the company finishes in the black. Nearly a decade after its founding, Amazon.com posts an annual profit of $35.3 million. Compared to 2002 (a loss of $149.1 million), this is a huge milestone for the world's largest online retailer.

In a pricey landmark deal, Amazon buys Chinese online retailer Joyo.com in August 2004. The $75 million investment gives the company access to a major market, and Amazon begins selling books, music, and videos through the platform. China never becomes the win Amazon hoped for: Facing fierce competition from Alibaba and JD.com, Amazon shut down its domestic marketplace for Chinese shoppers in 2019.

When the loyalty program launches in February 2005, subscribers pay $79 a year, and benefits are limited to free two-day shipping. By 2018, Amazon had an estimated 90 million Prime subscribers in the U.S. Today, a membership costs $139 a year or $14.99 a month and includes fast shipping, Prime Video, and a long list of other perks. The program hasn't been without controversy: In September 2025, Amazon agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle Federal Trade Commission allegations that it duped customers into enrolling in Prime and made it hard to cancel.

Amazon spent the early 2000s running e-commerce operations for other retailers, including Target.com. Those lessons in building infrastructure at scale turned into something much bigger. On March 14, 2006, Amazon Web Services launches S3, a cloud storage service, followed later that year by EC2, which lets businesses rent computing power by the hour. AWS is now the world's biggest cloud computing provider and Amazon's profit engine: In the third quarter of 2026 alone, AWS posted $46 billion in sales, up 39% from a year earlier.

Amazon's first branded product, the Kindle, launches in November 2007. Featured in Newsweek magazine, the first-generation Kindle is dubbed "the iPod of reading," and costs $399. It sells out within hours, sparking demand for digital books.

Amazon looks to dominate the print and digital book markets as well as audiobooks. In January 2008, Amazon agrees to acquire audiobook giant Audible for $300 million.

Amazon's grip on the book business only tightens after buying Audible, which goes on to hold 41% of the audiobook market. In January 2010, Amazon finds itself locked in a public battle with publisher Macmillan over e-book pricing, even pulling Macmillan titles from its site. In one of its biggest brushes with the publishing industry to date, Amazon eventually backs down and allows Macmillan to set its own prices.

In 2012, Amazon buys robotics company Kiva for $775 million. The company manufactures robots that move shelves of products weighing up to 700 pounds. The robots cut the fulfillment centers' operating costs by 20% and drastically improve efficiency, creating an even wider gap between the giant and its competitors. Kiva has since been renamed Amazon Robotics, and in July 2025, Amazon deployed its one-millionth robot.

Many of Amazon's warehouse jobs offer middle-class wages, which is why President Barack Obama chooses to deliver a 2013 economic policy speech in an Amazon warehouse in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He praises Amazon as an example of a large company doing its part to rebuild the economy. Amazon now employs more than 1.6 million people worldwide.

Mail usually isn't delivered on Sundays, but in late 2013, Amazon works out a deal with the U.S. Postal Service to have USPS carriers deliver its packages on Sundays, starting in Los Angeles and New York. Amazon is the first company to strike this type of deal, and its customers can now get packages seven days a week.

In an uncharacteristic misstep, Amazon unveils the Fire Phone in June 2014. Factors like its price ($650 without a contract) and a lack of popular apps (like Google Maps or Starbucks) render the phone a flop with consumers. Just months after launch, Amazon takes a $170 million write-down, largely on unsold Fire Phone inventory.

Amazon buys Twitch Interactive Inc., a fast-growing video game streaming company, for $970 million in cash. The acquisition bolsters Amazon's growing games division and pulls the entire gaming community into its orbit.

Many consumers view the opening of Amazon's first brick-and-mortar bookstore as an ironic twist of fate. The tech giant has long been blamed for the decline of independent bookshops, and when its first location opens in Seattle (with lines around the block), people have a lot to say. The experiment doesn't last: In March 2022, Amazon closed all 68 of its bookstores, along with its 4-star shops and pop-up locations.

While Amazon dominates almost all of the markets it enters, the company has long struggled to gain a foothold in the highly competitive grocery business. In 2017, Amazon buys Whole Foods and its more than 460 stores for $13.4 billion. Amazon has since integrated the two companies' distribution systems and extended discounts to Prime members. In January 2026, Amazon announced it would close its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores and make Whole Foods its primary physical grocery brand, with plans to open more than 100 new locations.

In a historic moment, Amazon crosses the $1 trillion valuation threshold in September of 2018. It's only the second U.S. company in history to meet that benchmark (Apple hit it a month earlier). Amazon didn't stop there: It crossed $2 trillion in stock market value for the first time in June 2024.

Jeff Bezos spent years as the world's richest person, and Amazon faced heavy criticism over employees' wages. In early 2018, the company's median annual pay was $28,446. Challenged by progressive leaders, Bezos announces in October that the company's minimum wage would be raised to $15, more than double the federal minimum wage. In September 2025, Amazon said it was raising average pay for U.S. fulfillment and transportation workers to more than $23 an hour.

On Nov. 13, 2018, after almost a year-long search, Amazon announces that its new headquarters (HQ2) will be split between New York City and Virginia. Hundreds of cities put in bids for the $5 billion project and its promised 50,000 jobs.

However, on Feb. 14, 2019, Amazon announced it was scrapping its plans for the Queens-based campus due to intense opposition from local politicians and activists. The Arlington, Virginia, campus moved forward, and its first phase, Metropolitan Park, opened in June 2023. The second phase, PenPlace, remains on hold.

Exactly 27 years after founding the company, Jeff Bezos hands the CEO role to Andy Jassy, the executive who built Amazon Web Services. Bezos becomes executive chairman, freeing up time for his other ventures, including space company Blue Origin and The Washington Post. Two weeks later, he rides one of Blue Origin's rockets to the edge of space.

Amazon completes its $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM, the nearly century-old Hollywood studio behind the James Bond and "Rocky" franchises. The deal hands Prime Video a library of thousands of films and TV episodes, and it makes Amazon a major Hollywood player.

More than a decade after Alexa first arrived in Echo speakers, Amazon unveils Alexa+, a rebuilt version of its voice assistant powered by generative AI. The new Alexa can carry on more natural conversations and complete tasks like booking reservations. It's free for Prime members and $19.99 a month for everyone else.

As it pours billions into artificial intelligence, Amazon cuts about 14,000 corporate jobs in October 2025. A second round of roughly 16,000 cuts follows in January 2026, bringing the total to about 30,000 corporate roles, the largest layoffs in the company's history. The business itself keeps growing: Amazon reported $201.9 billion in sales in the third quarter of 2026, up 12% from a year earlier.

This story was updated by Colby Droscher.