What happened
Amazon celebrated its 32nd anniversary on Sunday, having evolved from an online bookseller founded by Jeff Bezos on July 5, 1994, into a retail, cloud computing, and AI company. JPMorgan estimates Amazon passed Walmart last year to become the largest U.S. retailer.
Why it matters
AWS generated about $129 billion（約21兆円） in 2025 revenue and is running at an annualized pace above $140 billion（約22兆円） in 2026—more than Salesforce, Adobe, and ServiceNow generated last year combined. This scale shows how deeply cloud services have become embedded in business infrastructure.
What to watch
The company's cloud division continues to grow faster than its retail business, positioning AWS as a major profit driver alongside its core e-commerce operations.
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Amazon's 32-year trajectory reflects a dramatic shift in how the company generates value. What began as an online bookstore in 1995 has transformed into a diversified powerhouse spanning retail, cloud infrastructure, and AI services. The company's milestone comes as JPMorgan confirms a significant competitive milestone: Amazon has overtaken Walmart to become the largest U.S. retailer, ending Walmart's long reign in that position.
The most striking development, however, is the scale of AWS relative to Amazon's traditional retail business. AWS alone generated about $129 billion（約21兆円） in 2025 revenue and is tracking above $140 billion（約22兆円） in annualized 2026 revenue—a figure that exceeds what Salesforce, Adobe, and ServiceNow each generated in their entirety last year. This concentration of growth in cloud services underscores how Amazon's competitive advantage has shifted from consumer retail logistics to enterprise infrastructure, where margins and recurring revenue are substantially higher. The cloud division's momentum reflects both the company's early mover advantage in offering on-demand computing and the broad dependence of modern business on cloud platforms.
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