SEATTLE, WA – Amazon’s valuation cross the $1 trillion mark Tuesday morning after shares of the company jumped 2 percent. Amazon is only the second company ever to hit the trillion-dollar mark, after Apple did it last month.
Seattle-based Amazon employs about 560,000 people worldwide, including tens of thousands in Washington. Shares of Jeff Bezos’ company were trading at just over $2,050 Tuesday morning around 9 a.m.
Nearby Amazon, Redmond-based Microsoft has a market cap of just under $800 billion. Analysts believe Microsoft will hit $1 trillion within a few years.
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Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 in a Bellevue garage, and initially focused on selling books online. The company has grown enormously since, and sells basically everything. Recently, Amazon has ventured into new ways of selling products, including opening Amazon Go stores in Seattle that don’t have cashiers – customers walk out with items and censors in the store charge your credit card.
Bezos is worth about $165 billion, and his wealth has attracted widespread criticism in Seattle. Earlier this summer, the Seattle City Council passed a small per-employee “head tax” for large corporations to fund the construction of affordable housing. Amazon was one of the biggest opponents of the tax, and helped pressure Mayor Jenny Durkan and members of City Council to reverse the tax.
Amazon also donated more than $25,000 to a campaign to put the head tax up for a public vote.
Meanwhile, the company is deciding where to locate a new headquarters – one that would equal its presence in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood. The company is expected to make that selection shortly.
File photo by Neal McNamara/Patch