Amazon Surpasses Microsoft as the Most Valuable Company

It has now been almost two months since Microsoft captured the most-valuable-public-company title from Apple. This is the first time Microsoft is ending the year as the world’s highest valued public company since 2002. Now it is Amazon’s turn to be at the top.

The 24-year-old company surpassed Microsoft as the world’s most valuable public company on Monday 7th January 2019, closing the trading day with a market value of $796.8 billion, whereas Microsoft just surpassed Apple to take over the top spot worth $783.4 billion.

According to CNN, Amazon rose by 1% on Tuesday 8th January 2019, taking its value to almost $810 billion compared with Microsoft at $790 billion. The founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, reportedly topped the Bloomberg billionaires' index in 2018, gaining the most in terms of net worth for two years in a row.

Amazon has seen remarkable growth as its business has spread beyond its origins as an online bookseller to other numerous retail categories. Created in a garage in a suburb of Seattle, Washington, the company, originally dubbed “Cadabra,” sold its first book in mid-1995. By the end of that year, Amazon was selling books online throughout the US. Amazon went public in early 1997.

Furthermore, the company put growth over profit, investing heavily in warehouses, distribution networks, and data centers for more than a decade. Its landmark move includes the $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods Market in 2017, which brought it an extensive network of brick-and-mortar stores for the first time.

In September 2018, the Amazon stock briefly reached $1 trillion as a market cap when it rose by 1.9% to $2,050,50 a share on September 4, CNBC reported. Consequently, Amazon was titled as the second US-listed company to reach the $1-trillion mark following Apple, the stock of which reached the mark in August 2018.

Sources:

CNBC

The Times

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