Amazon.com

Sector: Consumer Cyclical

Industry: Internet Retail

Amazon Inc. is an American multinational technology company best known for e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming and artificial intelligence. It is consistently ranked as one of the world's most valuable brands and is a member of the unofficial Big Five American information technology firms that also includes Alphabet, Apple, Meta and Microsoft. Founded by Jeff Bezos in Bellevue, Washington, on July 5, 1994, the one-time online marketplace for books has since expanded into a wide array of product sectors. Today, it has multiple subsidiaries that have each achieved market leadership in their own right. These include Amazon Web Services for cloud storage and computing, Zoox for clean autonomous vehicles, Kuiper Systems that offers satellite Internet, in addition to a host of smaller brands, such as Ring, Twitch, Audible, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and IMDb, to mention but a few. Its acquisition of Whole Foods in August 2017 increased its presence as a physical retailer. Amazon Inc surpassed Walmart as the world's largest retailer outside of China, driven in large part by its paid subscription plan, Amazon Prime, which has over 200 million subscribers worldwide. It is the second-largest private employer in the US. The company distributes a range of streaming content through its Amazon Prime Video and Amazon Music imprints, in addition to the aforementioned Twitch and Audible. It still publishes books through Amazon Publishing, for which is what it was originally known before launching an aggressive, profit-funded acquisition spree that today sees it rightly nicknamed “The Everything Store.”