Amazon (company)

Amazon.com, Inc. (doing business as Amazon) is an American multinational technology company engaged in e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, entertainment, and artificial intelligence. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in Bellevue, Washington, the company originally started as an online marketplace for books but gradually expanded its offerings to include a wide range of product categories, referred to as "The Everything Store". Amazon has been described as a Big Tech company. It is best known as the world's biggest online shopping retailer and marketplace, offering a wide range of products and services. Amazon sells books, electronics, pharmaceuticals, car parts, video games, dining products, jewelry, food, music, and sports equipment. The company has multiple subsidiaries, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides cloud computing; Zoox, a self-driving car division; Kuiper Systems, a satellite Internet provider; and Amazon Lab126, a computer hardware R&D provider. Other subsidiaries include Ring, Twitch, IMDb, and Whole Foods Market. Its acquisition of Whole Foods in August 2017 for US$13.4 billion substantially increased its market share and its presence as a physical retailer. Amazon also distributes a variety of downloadable and streaming content through its Amazon Prime Video, MGM+, Amazon Music, Twitch, Audible, and Wondery units. It publishes books through its publishing arm, Amazon Publishing; produces and distributes film and television content through Amazon MGM Studios, including the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio it acquired in March 2022; and owns Brilliance Audio and Audible, which produce and distribute audiobooks, respectively. Amazon also produces consumer electronics, most notably Kindle e-readers, Echo devices, Fire tablets, and Fire TVs. Amazon has a reputation as a disruptor of industries through technological innovation and aggressive reinvestment of profits into capital expenditures. As of 2023, it is the world's largest online retailer and marketplace, smart speaker provider, cloud computing service provider through AWS, live-streaming service provider through Twitch, and Internet company as measured by revenue and market share. In 2021, it surpassed Walmart as the world's largest retailer outside of China, driven in large part by its paid subscription plan, Amazon Prime, which has 200 million subscribers worldwide. It is the second-largest private employer in the United States and the second-largest company in the world and the United States by revenue as of 2024 (after Walmart). As of October 2024, Amazon is the 12th-most visited website in the world, and 84% of its traffic comes from the United States. Amazon has been criticized for its business practices, including surveillance partnerships, poor working conditions, anti-union efforts, environmental harm, anticompetitive behavior, censorship controversies, and exploitative treatment of small businesses and suppliers. History 1994–2009 On July 5, 1994, Amazon was founded as "Cadabra" by Jeff Bezos, after he relocated from New York City to Bellevue, Washington, near Seattle, to operate an online bookstore. Bezos chose the Seattle area for its abundance of technical talent from Microsoft and the University of Washington, as well as its smaller population for sales tax purposes and the proximity to a major book distribution warehouse in Roseburg, Oregon. Other options Bezos considered included Portland, Oregon, and Boulder, Colorado. A few months later, in November 1994, Cadabra, which had been founded in the converted garage of Bezos's house for symbolic reasons, was renamed to Amazon. On July 16, 1995, the Amazon website launched for public sales, initially sourcing its books directly from wholesalers and publishers. Bezos retained the URL www.relentless.com, which he purchased when considering a name for the company; it redirects to the Amazon homepage. In May 1997, Amazon went public. In 1998, Amazon began selling music and videos, and began international operations by acquiring online sellers of books in the United Kingdom and Germany. In the subsequent year, it initiated the sale of a diverse range of products, including music, video games, consumer electronics, home improvement items, software, games, and toys. In 2002, the company launched Amazon Web Services (AWS), which initially focused on providing APIs for web developers to build web applications on top of Amazon's e-commerce platform. In 2004, AWS was expanded to provide website popularity statistics and web crawler data from the Alexa Web Information Service. AWS later shifted toward providing enterprise services with Simple Storage Service (S3) in 2006, and Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) in 2008, allowing companies to rent data storage and computing power from Amazon. In 2006, Amazon launched the Fulfillment by Amazon program, which allowed individuals and small companies (called "third-party sellers") to sell products through Amazon's warehouses and fulfillment infrastructure. 2010–present Amazon purchased the Whole Foods Market supermarket chain in 2017. It is the leading e-retailer in the United States with approximately US$178 billion net sales in 2017. It has over 300 million active customer accounts globally. Amazon saw large growth during the COVID-19 pandemic, hiring more than 100,000 staff in the United States and Canada. Some Amazon workers in the US, France, and Italy protested the company's decision to "run normal shifts" due to COVID-19's ease of spread in warehouses. In Spain, the company faced legal complaints over its policies, while a group of US Senators wrote an open letter to Bezos expressing concerns about workplace safety. On February 2, 2021, Bezos announced that he would step down as CEO to become executive chair of Amazon's board. The transition officially took place on July 5, 2021, with former CEO of AWS Andy Jassy replacing him as CEO. In January 2023, Amazon cut over 18,000 jobs, primarily in consumer retail and its human resources division in an attempt to cut costs. On November 8, 2023, a plan was adopted for Jeff Bezos to sell approximately 50 million shares of the company over the next year with a deadline of January 31, 2025. The first step was the sale of 12 million shares for about $2 billion. On February 26, 2024, Amazon became a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. On December 19, 2024, Amazon workers, led by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters labor union, went on strike against Amazon in at least four US states, with workers in other facilities in the United States being welcomed to join the strike as well. On October 28, 2025, the company announced plans to reduce its corporate workforce by 14,000 positions, which has been reported as the largest round of job cuts by Amazon since 2022. As part of this plan, Amazon is expected to fire about 370 people from its European headquarters in Luxembourg in December 2025 to early 2026. In January 2026, Amazon announced a second round of large-scale layoffs, affecting approximately 16,000 corporate employees. This followed the earlier reduction of 14,000 positions in October 2025. According to company statements and news reports, the layoffs were part of a broader effort to streamline operations, reduce bureaucracy, and adapt to changing business conditions, including the adoption of artificial intelligence technologies. Affected employees were offered severance packages and support for internal job placement. In January 2025, Amazon filed an objection to Saks Global’s bankruptcy financing plan. Amazon invested $475 million into Saks’ acquisition of Neiman Marcus, and is now worried that Saks declaring bankruptcy would harm creditors and push the tech company further down the repayment pecking order. In January 2026, Amazon entered talks with OpenAI to invest up to $50 billion. Amazon historically has a deep strategic partnership with Anthropic, OpenAI's competitor. In January 2026, Amazon also laid off 16,000 employees in what is Amazon's second round of large-scale job reductions in three months due to AI. In March 2026, Amazon signed an energy pledge at the White House which required it to bear the cost of new electricity generation to power its data centers. Amazon launched Amazon Supply Chain Services in May 2026. Products and services Amazon.com Amazon.com is an e-commerce platform that sells many product lines, including media (books, movies, music, and software), apparel, baby products, consumer electronics, beauty products, gourmet food, groceries, health and personal care products, industrial & scientific supplies, kitchen items, jewelry, watches, lawn and garden items, musical instruments, sporting goods, tools, automotive items, toys and games, and farm supplies and consulting services. Amazon websites are country-specific (for example, amazon.com for the US and amazon.co.uk for UK) though some offer international shipping. Visits to amazon.com grew from 615 million annual visitors in 2008, to more than 2 billion per month in 2022. The e-commerce platform is the 12th most visited website in the world. In February 2024, Amazon announced its first chatbot, "Rufus", for use in the US; in July it was widely available to all customers in the US. "Rufus" is now available in the US, India and the UK which helps the shoppers get product recommendations, get shopping list advice, compare products and see what other customers have responded to regarding their specific questions. Results generated by Amazon's search engine are partly determined by promotional fees. The company's localized storefronts, which differ in selection and prices, are differentiated by top-level domain and country code: Merchant partnerships In 2000, US toy retailer Toys "R" Us entered into a 10-year agreement with Amazon, valued at $50 million per year plus a cut of sales, under which Toys "R" Us would be the exclusive supplier of toys and baby products on the service, and the chain's website would redirect to Amazon's Toys & Games category. In 2004, Toys "R" Us sued Amazon, claiming that because of a perceived lack of variety in Toys "R" Us stock, Amazon had knowingly allowed third-party sellers to offer items on the service in categories that Toys "R" Us had been granted exclusivity. In 2006, a court ruled in favor of Toys "R" Us, giving it the right to unwind its agreement with Amazon and establish its independent e-commerce website. The company was later awarded $51 million in damages. In 2001, Amazon entered into a similar agreement with Borders, under which Amazon would comanage Borders.com as a co-branded service. Borders pulled out of the arrangement in 2007, with plans to also launch its own online store. On October 18, 2011, Amazon.com announced a partnership with DC Comics for the exclusive digital rights to many popular comics, including Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Sandman, and Watchmen. The partnership has caused well-known bookstores like Barnes & Noble to remove these titles from its shelves. In November 2013, Amazon announced a partnership with the United States Postal Service to begin delivering orders on Sundays. The service, included in Amazon's standard shipping rates, initiated in metropolitan areas of Greater Los Angeles and New York because of the high-volume and inability to deliver in a timely way, with plans to expand into Dallas, Houston, New Orleans and Phoenix by 2014. In June 2017, Nike agreed to sell products through Amazon in exchange for better policing of counterfeit goods. This proved unsuccessful and Nike withdrew from the partnership in November 2019. Companies including IKEA and Birkenstock also stopped selling through Amazon around the same time, citing similar frustrations over business practices and counterfeit goods. In September 2017, Amazon ventured with one of its sellers JV Appario Retail owned by Patni Group which has recorded a total income of US$104.44 million (₹759 crore) in financial year 2017–2018. As of October 11, 2017, Amazon Fresh sold a range of Booths branded products for home delivery in selected areas. In November 2018, Amazon reached an agreement with Apple Inc. to sell selected products through the service, via the company and selected Apple Authorized Resellers. As a result of this partnership, only Apple Authorized Resellers may sell Apple products on Amazon effective January 4, 2019. On November 7, 2024, Amazon is reportedly discussing a second multi-billion dollar investment in AI startup Anthropic, following its initial $4 billion investment. On 8 October 2025, Amazon launched prescription vending machines at One Medical clinics in Los Angeles. The machines are operated by Amazon Pharmacy and are able to prescribe a range of common medications, such as antibiotics, inhalers and blood pressure treatments. Private-label products Amazon sells many products under its own brand names, including phone chargers, batteries, and diaper wipes. The AmazonBasics brand was introduced in 2009, and now features hundreds of product lines, including smartphone cases, computer mice, batteries, dumbbells, and dog crates. Amazon owned 34 private-label brands as of 2019. These brands account for 0.15% of Amazon's global sales, whereas the average for other large retailers is 18%. Other Amazon retail brands include Presto!, Mama Bear, and Amazon Essentials. Third-party sellers Amazon derives many of its sales (around 40% in 2008) from third-party sellers who sell products on Amazon. Some other large e-commerce sellers use Amazon to sell their products in addition to selling them through their websites. The sales are processed through Amazon.com and end up at individual sellers for processing and order fulfillment and Amazon leases space for these retailers. Small sellers of used and new goods go to Amazon Marketplace to offer goods at a fixed price. Affiliate program Publishers can sign up as affiliates and receive a commission for referring customers to Amazon by placing links to Amazon on their websites if the referral results in a sale. Worldwide, Amazon has "over 900,000 members" in its affiliate programs. As of mid-2014, the Amazon Affiliate Program was used by 1.2% of all websites and was the second most popular advertising network after Google Ads. It is frequently used by websites and non-profits to provide a way for supporters to earn them a commission. Associates can access the Amazon catalog directly on their websites by using the Amazon Web Services (AWS) XML service. A new affiliate product, aStore, allows Associates to embed a subset of Amazon products within another website, or linked to another website. In June 2010, Amazon Seller Product Suggestions was launched to provide more transparency to sellers by recommending specific products to third-party sellers to sell on Amazon. Products suggested are based on customers' browsing history. Product reviews Amazon allows users to submit reviews to the web page of each product. Reviewers must rate the product on a rating scale from one to five stars. Amazon provides a badging option for reviewers that indicates the real name of the reviewer (based on confirmation of a credit card account) or that indicates that the reviewer is one of the top reviewers by popularity. As of 16 December 2020, Amazon removed the ability of sellers and customers to comment on product reviews and purged their websites of all posted product review comments. In an email to sellers, Amazon gave its rationale for removing this feature: "...the comments feature on customer reviews was rarely used." The remaining review response options are to indicate whether the reader finds the review helpful or to report that it violates Amazon policies (abuse). If a review is given enough "helpful" hits, it appears on the front page of the product. In 2010, Amazon was reported as being the largest single source of Internet consumer reviews. When publishers asked Bezos why Amazon would publish negative reviews, he defended the practice by claiming that Amazon.com was "taking a different approach...we want to make every book available—the good, the bad and the ugly...to let truth loose". There have been cases of positive reviews being written and posted by public relations companies on behalf of their clients and instances of writers using pseudonyms to leave negative reviews of their rivals' works. Amazon sales rank The Amazon sales rank (ASR) indicates the popularity of a product sold on any Amazon locale. It is a relative indicator of popularity that is updated hourly. Effectively, it is a "best sellers list" for the millions of products stocked by Amazon. While the ASR has no direct effect on the sales of a product, it is used by Amazon to determine which products to include in its bestsellers lists. Products that appear in these lists enjoy additional exposure on the Amazon website and this may lead to an increase in sales. In particular, products that experience large jumps (up or down) in their sales ranks may be included within Amazon's lists of "movers and shakers"; such a listing provides additional exposure that might lead to an increase in sales. For competitive reasons, Amazon does not release actual sales figures to the public. However, Amazon has now begun to release point of sale data via the BookScan service to verified authors. While the ASR has been the source of much speculation by publishers, manufacturers, and marketers, Amazon itself does not release the details of its sales rank calculation algorithm. Some companies have analyzed Amazon sales data to generate sales estimates based on the ASR, though Amazon states: Please keep in mind that our sales rank figures are simply meant to be a guide of general interest for the customer and not definitive sales information for publishers—we assume you have this information regularly from your distribution sources Physical stores In November 2015, Amazon opened a physical Amazon Books store in University Village in Seattle. The store was 5,500 square feet and prices for all products matched those on its website. Amazon opened its tenth physical bookstore in 2017; media speculation at the time suggested that Amazon planned to eventually roll out 300 to 400 bookstores around the country. All of its locations were closed in 2022 along with other retail locations under the "Amazon 4-Star" brand. In July 2016, the company announced that it was opening a 1,100,000 ft (335,280.0 m) square foot facility in Palmer Township in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania. As of 2024, Amazon is the Lehigh Valley region's third-largest employer. In August 2019, Amazon applied to have a liquor store in San Francisco, as a means to ship beer and alcohol within the city. In 2020, Amazon Fresh opened several physical stores in the US and the United Kingdom. In January 2026, Amazon announced it would close all of its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores to shift focus to its online same-day delivery service and expand its Whole Foods Market business. The closure affects 57 Fresh stores and 15 Amazon Go locations, some of which will be converted into Whole Foods stores. Hardware and services Amazon has a number of products and services available, including its digital assistant Alexa, Amazon Music, and Prime Video for music and videos respectively, the Amazon Appstore for Android apps, the Kindle line of electronic paper e-readers, Fire and Fire HD color LCD tablets. Audible provides audiobooks for purchase and listening. In September 2021, Amazon announced the launch of Astro, its first household robot, powered by its Alexa smart home technology. This can be remote-controlled when not at home, to check on pets, people, or home security. It will send owners a notification if it detects something unusual. In January 2023, Amazon announced the launch of RXPass, a prescription drug delivery service. It allows U.S. Amazon Prime members to pay a $5 monthly fee for access to 60 medications. The service was launched immediately after the announcement except in states with specific prescription delivery requirements. Beneficiaries of government healthcare programs such as Medicare and Medicaid will not be able to sign up for RXPass. Subsidiaries Amazon owns over 100 subsidiaries, including Amazon Web Services, Audible, Diapers.com, Goodreads, IMDb, Kiva Systems (now Amazon Robotics), One Medical, Shopbop, Teachstreet, Twitch, Zappos, and Zoox. Bezos separately owns The Washington Post (through Nash Holdings, LLC), Blue Origin, Bezos Expeditions, Altos Labs, and other companies. Amazon Live Amazon Live is a video e-commerce live-streaming service created to compete with live-streaming services. The service allows users to stream live videos promoting or sponsoring products. Users (mainly celebrities or Internet influencers) have the option to livestream on Amazon and add tags to additionally add context to the products they're selling or promoting. Other users can join in and type in messages to send to a global chat on the livestream. In 2019 Amazon launched an integrated platform into the Amazon website and application. In 2023 roughly a billion total viewers watch Amazon Live across the United States and India. The platform has also been integrated into Amazon Freevee and Amazon Prime Video. Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis. These cloud computing web services provide distributed computing processing capacity and software tools via AWS server farms. As of 2021 Q4, AWS has 33% market share for cloud infrastructure while the next two competitors Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud have 21%, and 10% respectively, according to Synergy Group. Audible Audible is a seller and producer of spoken audio entertainment, information, and educational programming on the Internet. Audible sells digital audiobooks, radio and television programs, and audio versions of magazines and newspapers. Through its production arm, Audible Studios, Audible has also become the world's largest producer of downloadable audiobooks. On January 31, 2008, Amazon announced it would buy Audible for about $300 million. The deal closed in March 2008 and Audible became a subsidiary of Amazon. Goodreads Goodreads is a "social cataloging" website founded in December 2006 and launched in January 2007 by Otis Chandler, a software engineer, and entrepreneur, and Elizabeth Khuri. The website allows individuals to freely search Goodreads' extensive user-populated database of books, annotations, and reviews. Users can sign up and register books to generate library catalogs and reading lists. They can also create their groups of book suggestions and discussions. In December 2007, the site had over 650,000 members, and over a million books had been added. Amazon bought the company in March 2013. Ring Ring is a home automation company founded by Jamie Siminoff in 2013. It is primarily known for its Wi-Fi powered smart doorbells, but manufactures other devices such as security cameras. Amazon bought Ring for US$1 billion in 2018. Twitch Twitch is a live streaming platform for video, primarily oriented towards video gaming content. Twitch was acquired by Amazon in August 2014 for $970 million. The site's rapid growth had been boosted primarily by the prominence of major esports competitions on the service, leading GameSpot senior esports editor Rod Breslau to have described the service as "the ESPN of esports". As of 2015, the service had over 1.5 million broadcasters and 100 million monthly viewers. Whole Foods Market Whole Foods Market is an American supermarket chain exclusively featuring foods without artificial preservatives, colors, flavors, sweeteners, and hydrogenated fats. Amazon acquired Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in August 2017. Since acquiring Whole Foods, the company has launched its own chain of Fresh supermarkets and taken steps to integrate its online and physical grocery operations. Other Other Amazon subsidiaries include: A9.com, a company focused on researching and building innovative technology; it has been a subsidiary since 2003. Amazon Academy, formerly JEE Ready, is an online learning platform for engineering students to prepare for competitive exams like the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), launched by Amazon India on January 13, 2021 Amazon Maritime, Inc. holds a Federal Maritime Commission license to operate as a non-vessel-owning common carrier (NVOCC), which enables the company to manage its shipments from China into the United States. Amazon Pharmacy is an online delivery service dedicated to prescription drugs, launched in November 2020. The service provides discounts up to 80% for generic drugs and up to 40% for branded drugs for Prime subscribe users. The products can be purchased on the company's website or at over 50,000 bricks-and-mortar pharmacies in the United States. Annapurna Labs, an Israel-based microelectronics company reputedly for US$350–370M acquired by Amazon Web Services in January 2015 . Beijing Century Joyo Courier Services, which applied for a freight forwarding license with the US Maritime Commission. Amazon is also building out its logistics in trucking and air freight to potentially compete with UPS and FedEx. Brilliance Audio, an audiobook publisher founded in 1984 by Michael Snodgrass in Grand Haven, Michigan. The company produced its first eight audio titles in 1985. The company was purchased by Amazon in 2007 for an undisclosed amount. At the time of the acquisition, Brilliance was producing 12–15 new titles a month. It operates as an independent company within Amazon. In 1984, Brilliance Audio invented a technique for recording twice as much on the same cassette. The technique involved recording on each of the two channels of each stereo track. It has been credited with revolutionizing the burgeoning audiobook market in the mid-1980s since it made unabridged books affordable. ComiXology, a cloud-based digital comics platform with over 200 million comic downloads as of September 2013. It offers a selection of more than 40,000 comic books and graphic novels across Android, iOS, Fire OS and Windows 8 devices and over a web browser. Amazon bought the company in April 2014. CreateSpace, which offers self-publishing services for independent content creators, publishers, film studios, and music labels, became a subsidiary in 2009. eero, an electronics company specializing in mesh-networking Wi-Fi founded as a startup in 2014 by Nick Weaver, Amos Schallich, and Nate Hardison to simplify and innovate the smart home. Eero was acquired by Amazon in 2019 for US$97 million. Eero has continued to operate under its banner and advertises its commitment to privacy despite early concerns from the company's acquisition. Health Navigator is a startup developing APIs for online health services acquired in October 2019. The startup will form part of Amazon Care, which is the company's employee healthcare service. This follows the 2018 purchase of PillPack for under $1 billion, which has also been included into Amazon Care. Junglee, a former online shopping service provided by Amazon that enabled customers to search for products from online and offline retailers in India. Junglee started as a virtual database that was used to extract information from the Internet and deliver it to enterprise applications. As it progressed, Junglee started to use its database technology to create a single window marketplace on the Internet by making every item from every supplier available for purchase. Web shoppers could locate, compare and transact millions of products from across the Internet shopping mall through one window. Amazon acquired Junglee in 1998, and the website Junglee.com was launched in India in February 2012 as a comparison-shopping website. It curated and enabled searching for a diverse variety of products such as clothing, electronics, toys, jewelry, and video games, among others, across thousands of online and offline sellers. Millions of products are browsable, the client selects a price, and then they are directed to a seller. In November 2017, Amazon closed down Junglee.com and the former domain currently redirects to Amazon India. Kuiper Systems, a subsidiary of Amazon, set up to deploy a broadband satellite internet constellation with an announced 3,236 Low Earth orbit satellites to provide satellite based Internet connectivity. Lab126, developers of integrated consumer electronics such as the Kindle, became a subsidiary in 2004. Shelfari, a former social cataloging website for books. Shelfari users built virtual bookshelves of the titles which they owned or had read and they could rate, review, tag and discuss their books. Users could also create groups that other members could join, create discussions and talk about books, or other topics. Recommendations could be sent to friends on the site for what books to read. Amazon bought the company in August 2008. Shelfari continued to function as an independent book social network within the Amazon until January 2016, when Amazon announced that it would be merging Shelfari with Goodreads and closing down Shelfari. Souq, the former largest e-commerce platform in the Arab world. The company launched in 2005 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and served multiple areas across the Middle East. On March 28, 2017, Amazon acquired Souq.com for $580 million. The company was re-branded as Amazon and its infrastructure was used to expand Amazon's online platform in the Middle East. Zoox, Amazon's self-driving subsidiary, operates in the US and expects to start charging passengers for rides in Las Vegas in early 2026. Amazon also has investments in renewable energy, including plans to fund four small nuclear reactors at the Xe-100 reactor site in Eastern Washington, and plans to expand its position into the Canadian market through an investment in a new plant in Alberta. Operations Headquarters Amazon's global headquarters are in more than 40 owned and leased buildings spread across Seattle's adjacent South Lake Union, Denny Triangle, and Downtown neighborhoods. The first 14 buildings Amazon occupied in South Lake Union were developed primarily by Vulcan, Inc. from 2008 onward, the first 11 of which were acquired from Vulcan in 2012 at a cost of $1.16 billion. The company was previously headquartered in rented space within the Pacific Medical Center, located in the city's Beacon Hill neighborhood, from 1998 to 2011. Amazon built a four tower, four low-rise, complex in Seattle's Denny Triangle neighborhood to serve as the company's primary headquarters, though it retained many of the earlier purchased buildings to house its more than 45,000 corporate employees in the Seattle area. The plan for the new campus, designed by NBBJ and named "Rufus 2.0" after a dog who was a fixture of the company in its early days, was approved by the city of Seattle in 2012, with construction commencing the following year. The first of the towers, nicknamed Doppler, opened on December 14, 2015. Other major campuses Amazon's European headquarters are in Luxembourg's capital, Luxembourg. Its UK headquarters are at Principal Place, Shoreditch, London. On November 13, 2018, Amazon announced that it would divide the planned HQ2 between New York City and Northern Virginia. On February 14, 2019, Amazon canceled its plan for the HQ2 location in New York City. Amazon is also in the process of building a retail hub of operations center in Nashville, Tennessee. On August 21, 2019, Amazon opened its largest campus in the world at Nanakramguda in Hyderabad, India. It is the first Amazon-owned campus located outside the United States and features the single largest Amazon-owned building in the world. The 9.5-acre campus houses over 15,000 employees. In 2021, construction began on the Riverlands mixed-use development in Cape Town, South Africa. The 14-hectare site includes the headquarters of Amazon Africa. The company began using its new HQ in December 2023. Amazon plans to build a major campus in Bellevue, Washington, a suburb of Seattle, that will host 15,000 employees by 2025. The company opened its first Bellevue office in 2017, marking a return to the city since the company was founded there in 1995. Amazon's largest building in the city is Sonic, a 42-story building developed by Vulcan Real Estate with 1 million square feet (93,000 m2) of office space. It opened in 2024. The Bellevue campus will include the 43-story Bellevue 600 tower, which is planned to be the tallest building in the city and the tallest to be developed by Amazon. Global corporate offices While much of Amazon's software development occurs in Seattle, the company employs software developers in centers across the globe. Some of these sites are run by an Amazon subsidiary called A2Z Development. Retail Amazon has operated various retail store brands. Most of the stores are located inside of the United States, but Whole Foods also operates stores in Canada and the United Kingdom, while Amazon Go has six locations in London under the Amazon Fresh name. Whole Foods Market (557 locations as of June 2026) Amazon Books (24) Amazon Go (30) Amazon Go Grocery (1) Amazon Fresh (24) Amazon 4-Star (31) - a collection of new and trending items from Amazon.com that are rated four stars or higher. Amazon Pop-Up (7) - small kiosks which sell Amazon devices such as Echo speakers, Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, and Fire TV devices, Facebook Portal Plus and Oculus Quest are also found; usually housed in malls. All 87 were closed in May 2019 with 5 initially reopening later on. 365 by Whole Foods Market (12) - In January 2019, it was announced that the 365 by Whole Foods Market concept would be discontinued; all existing stores would be converted into regular Whole Foods stores. Logistics Amazon uses many different transportation services to deliver packages. Amazon-branded services include: Amazon Air, a cargo airline for bulk transport, with last-mile delivery handled either by Amazon Flex, Amazon Logistics, or the U.S. Postal Service. Amazon Flex, a smartphone app that enables individuals to act as independent contractors, delivering packages to customers from personal vehicles without uniforms. Deliveries include one or two hours Prime Now, same or next day Amazon Fresh groceries, and standard Amazon.com orders, in addition to orders from local stores that contract with Amazon. Amazon Freight, a freight brokerage and logistics service Amazon Logistics, in which Amazon contracts with small businesses (which it calls "Delivery Service Partners") to perform deliveries to customers. Each business has a fleet of approximately 20–40 Amazon-branded vans, and employees of the contractors wear Amazon uniforms. As of December 2020, it operates in the United States, Canada, Italy, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Amazon Prime Air is an experimental drone delivery service that delivers packages via drones to Amazon Prime subscribers in select cities. Amazon directly employs people to work at its warehouses, bulk distribution centers, staffed "Amazon Hub Locker+" locations, and delivery stations where drivers pick up packages. As of December 2020, it is not hiring delivery drivers as employees. Rakuten Intelligence estimated that in 2020 in the United States, the proportion of last-mile deliveries was 56% by Amazon's directly contracted services (mostly in urban areas), 30% by the United States Postal Service (mostly in rural areas), and 14% by UPS. In April 2021, Amazon reported to investors it had increased its in-house delivery capacity by 50% in the last 12 months (which included the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States). Pickup points In addition to Amazon Lockers, Amazon has around 30 staffed pickup points in the United States and over 800 independent ones in India. The US locations have large sets of Amazon Lockers and an area for customers to make returns. The India locations are in existing retailers and have customers wait for a store employee to retrieve their package. Supply chain Amazon first launched its distribution network in 1997 with two fulfillment centers in Seattle and New Castle, Delaware. Amazon has several types of distribution facilities consisting of cross-dock centers, fulfillment centers, sortation centers, delivery stations, Prime now hubs, and Prime air hubs. There are 75 fulfillment centers and 25 sortation centers with over 125,000 employees. Employees are responsible for five basic tasks: unpacking and inspecting incoming goods; placing goods in storage and recording their location; picking goods from their computer recorded locations to make up an individual shipment; sorting and packing orders; and shipping. A computer that records the location of goods and maps out routes for pickers plays a key role: employees carry hand-held computers which communicate with the central computer and monitor their rate of progress. Some warehouses are partially automated with systems built by Amazon Robotics. In September 2006, Amazon launched a program called FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon) whereby it could handle storage, packing and distribution of products and services for small sellers. Amazon fulfillment centers are large facilities with hundreds of employees, sometimes thousands. Employees are responsible for five basic tasks: unpacking and inspecting incoming goods; placing goods in storage and recording their location; picking goods from their computer recorded locations to make up an individual shipment; sorting and packing orders; and shipping. A computer that records the location of goods and maps out routes for pickers plays a key role: employees carry hand-held computers which communicate with the central computer and monitor their rate of progress. A picker may walk 10 or more miles a day. In newer fulfillment centers, items are stored on pods and brought to pickers by robots (Amazon Robotics). In the United Kingdom, initial staffing was provided by Randstad NV and other temporary employment agencies. In the United States, many workers are hired as Amazon employees and granted shares of stock or sign-on bonuses, while others are offered temporary seasonal positions. "When we have permanent positions available, we look to the top-performing temporary associates to fill them," said an Amazon spokesperson. Amazon acquired Kiva Systems, a warehouse automation company, in 2012. Amazon fulfillment centers can also provide warehousing and order-fulfillment for third-party sellers, for an extra fee. Third-party sellers can use Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) to ship for other platforms as well, such as eBay or their own websites. On March 20, 2020, Amazon agreed to remove metal detectors from its warehouses after a warehouse worker tested positive for COVID-19. In addition to removing metal detectors, Amazon enacted a "6 feet rule", which enforced a six-feet distance between warehouse employees. The Federal Public Health Emergency (PHE) for COVID-19 (which included social distancing) declared under Section 319 of the Public Health Service (PHS) Act, expired at the end of the day on May 11, 2023. Corporate affairs Board of directors As of August 2025, Amazon's board of directors were: Jeff Bezos, executive chairman, Amazon.com, Inc. Andy Jassy, president and CEO, Amazon.com, Inc. Keith B. Alexander, CEO of IronNet Cybersecurity, former NSA director Edith W. Cooper, co-founder of Medley and former EVP of Goldman Sachs Jamie Gorelick, partner, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr Daniel Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. Andrew Ng, co-founder, Coursera Indra Nooyi, former CEO, PepsiCo Jon Rubinstein, former chairman and CEO, Palm, Inc. Brad D. Smith, president, Marshall University Patty Stonesifer, president and CEO, Martha's Table Wendell Weeks, chairman, president and CEO, Corning Inc. Ownership The 10 largest shareholders of Amazon at the end of October 2025: Finances Amazon.com is primarily a retail site with a sales revenue model; Amazon takes a small percentage of the sale price of each item that is sold through its website while also allowing companies to advertise their products by paying to be listed as featured products. As of 2018, Amazon.com is ranked eighth on the Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. In Forbes Global 2000 2023 Amazon ranked 36th. For the fiscal year 2021, Amazon reported earnings of US$33.36 billion, with an annual revenue of US$469.82 billion, an increase of 21.7% over the previous fiscal cycle. Since 2007 sales increased from 14.835 billion to 469.822 billion, due to continued business expansion. Amazon's market capitalization went over US$1 trillion again in early February 2020 after the announcement of the fourth quarter 2019 results. Corporate culture During his tenure, Jeff Bezos had become renowned for his annual shareholder letters, which have gained similar notability to those of Warren Buffett. These annual letters gave an "invaluable window" into the famously "secretive" company, and revealed Bezos's perspectives and strategic focus. A common theme of these letters is Bezos's desire to instill customer-centricity (in his words, "customer obsession") at all levels of Amazon, notably by making all senior executives field customer support queries for a short time at Amazon call centers. He also read many emails addressed by customers to his public email address. One of Bezos's most well-known internal memos was his mandate for "all teams" to "expose their data and functionality" through service interfaces "designed from the ground up to be externalizable". This process, commonly known as a service-oriented architecture (SOA), resulted in mandatory dogfooding of services that would later be commercialized as part of AWS. Amazon has used internal recognition programs such as the Just Do It Award to encourage employee initiative and experimentation. Lobbying Amazon lobbies the United States federal government and state governments on multiple issues such as the enforcement of sales taxes on online sales, transportation safety, privacy and data protection and intellectual property. According to regulatory filings, Amazon.com focuses its lobbying on the United States Congress, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Reserve. Amazon.com spent roughly $3.5 million, $5 million and $9.5 million on lobbying, in 2013, 2014 and 2015, respectively. In 2019, it spent $16.8 million and had a team of 104 lobbyists. Amazon.com was a corporate member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) until it dropped membership following protests at its shareholders' meeting on May 24, 2012. In 2014, Amazon expanded its lobbying practices as it prepared to lobby the Federal Aviation Administration to approve its drone delivery program, hiring the Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld lobbying firm in June. Amazon and its lobbyists have visited with Federal Aviation Administration officials and aviation committees in Washington, D.C. to explain its plans to deliver packages. In September 2020 this moved one step closer with the granting of a critical certificate by the FAA. During the second Trump Administration, Amazon donated several times to various events and aspects of his presidency. Along with several other major companies, Amazon donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund. In April 2025, Amazon was a corporate sponsor of the White House Easter Egg Roll, after Donald Trump solicited corporate sponsors for the event for the first time. In October 2025, Amazon was listed among the donors funding the construction of the White House State Ballroom. Amazon lobbies on climate policy internationally. In the US, following Trump’s 2025 inauguration, Amazon began frequent engagements with the executive branch to advocate for permitting reform and energy development to support data center growth. In July 2025, Amazon joined policymakers at the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, where it supported the development of nuclear energy to meet growing electricity demand, and lobbied for permitting reform to support grid development nationwide. Amazon sponsored the Conservative Coalition for Climate Solutions’ (C3) Energy Summit in Washington D.C. in December 2025, which brought together administration officials and industry representatives to discuss meeting the country’s growing electricity demand through modernization of the permitting process, investment in energy infrastructure, and scaling new technologies. A December 2025 DeSmog article reported that the company’s sponsorship came alongside several organizations that had supported climate change denial, and a continued role for fossil fuels to meet growing energy demand. Criticism and controversies Amazon has attracted criticism for its actions, including supplying law enforcement with facial recognition surveillance tools; forming cloud computing partnerships with the CIA; leading customers away from bookshops; adversely impacting the environment; placing a low priority on warehouse conditions for workers; actively opposing unionization efforts; remotely deleting content purchased by Amazon Kindle users; taking public subsidies; seeking to patent its 1-Click technology; engaging in anti-competitive actions and price discrimination; and reclassifying LGBTQ books as adult content. Criticism has also concerned various decisions over whether to censor or publish content such as the WikiLeaks website, works containing libel, anti-LGBT merchandise, and material facilitating dog fighting, cockfighting, or pedophile activities. An article published by Time in the wake of social media website Parler's termination of service by Amazon Web Service highlights the power companies like Amazon now have over the internet. In December 2011, Amazon faced a backlash from small businesses for running a one-day deal to promote its new Price Check app. Shoppers who used the app to check prices in a brick-and-mortar store were offered a 5% discount to purchase the same item from Amazon. Companies like Groupon, eBay and Taap have countered Amazon's promotion by offering $10 off from its products. The company has also faced accusations of putting undue pressure on suppliers to maintain and extend its profitability. One effort to squeeze the most vulnerable book publishers was known within the company as the Gazelle Project, after Bezos suggested, according to Brad Stone, "that Amazon should approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle." In July 2014, the Federal Trade Commission launched a lawsuit against the company alleging it was promoting in-app purchases to children, which were being transacted without parental consent. In 2019, Amazon banned selling skin-lightening products after pushback from Minnesota health and environmental activists. In 2022, a lawsuit filed by state attorney-general Letitia James was dismissed by the New York state court of appeals. After the COVID-19 pandemic, Amazon faced criticism for complying, under pressure from the Biden Administration, to "reduce the visibility" of books critical of the COVID-19 vaccine, which was revealed after Rep. Jim Jordan (acting on behalf of the House Judiciary Committee) subpoenaed emails between the company and the Biden Administration. Amazon Prime has been criticized for its vehicles systemically double parking, blocking bike lanes, and otherwise violating traffic laws while dropping off packages, contributing to traffic congestion and endangering other road users. Jane Friedman discovered six listings of books fraudulently using her name, on Amazon and Goodreads. Amazon and Goodreads resisted removing the fraudulent titles until the author's complaints went viral on social media, in a blog post titled "I Would Rather See My Books Get Pirated Than This (Or: Why Goodreads and Amazon Are Becoming Dumpster Fires)." In 2024, following years of criticism for providing law enforcement footage in the custody of Ring (a home security company owned by Amazon) without a warrant, Ring has halted this practice. It received cautious praise from privacy-focused organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation for this change. In February 2025, Sky accused Amazon of not doing enough to prevent the piracy of its sports rights via "jailbroken" Fire Sticks. Project Nimbus is a contract by which Amazon and Google provide Israel and its military with artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other cloud-computing services. The contract has been criticized by shareholders and employees concerned that the project may lead to abuses of Palestinian human rights in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In October 2025, Amazon suspended an employee who posted messages to the company's Slack and wrote a letter to Andy Jassy criticizing Nimbus. On July 22, 2025, Amazon announced its plan to acquire San Francisco-based startup Bee AI. Bee produces a wristband, similar to most modern smartwatches, equipped with AI and microphones. The wristband is capable of providing summaries of conversations and reminders of tasks, effectively serving as a 24/7 note taker. News outlets criticize the fact that the devices saves transcripts, potentially utilizing it to train generative AI models which require vast quantities of data. In January 2026, Amazon sent a notice out to cloud staffers in an apparent error acknowledging “organizational changes” at the company. The note also mentioned a "Project Dawn" which was cancelled, although it is unclear what the project is about. See also Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award – Literary award Amazon Pay – Online purchase processing system Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN) – Alphanumeric unique identifier Amazon Storywriter – Cloud-based screenwriting app by Amazon Camelcamelcamel – A website that tracks the prices of products sold on Amazon.com Criticism of Amazon History of Amazon Internal carbon pricing List of book distributors Statistically improbable phrases – Amazon.com's phrase extraction technique for indexing books References Further reading External links Official website Amazon on OpenSecrets, a website that tracks and publishes data on campaign finance and lobbying Amazon (company) companies grouped at OpenCorporates Business data for Amazon.com, Inc.: