Amazon Becomes Fifth US Company To Reach $2 Trillion Market Cap

Shares of Amazon (AMZN) rose nearly 4% on Wednesday, making the e-commerce giant the fifth U.S. company to reach a market capitalization of above $2 trillion.

Amazon's stock has been buoyed lately by surging spending on artificial intelligence and cloud computing, a field in which it commands significant market share alongside Microsoft (MSFT) and Alphabet (GOOGL). Bets that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates later this year have given tech stocks a leg up, while Amazon's e-commerce business has held up despite the pressures of high inflation. 

Reached $1 Trillion Market Cap in 2020

Amazon was the fourth U.S. company to close above $1 trillion when it first did so in February 2020. Booking the second trillion has been slow going for the company, at least when compared with most of its mega-cap peers. 

It took Amazon 1,104 trading days, or more than four years, to add its second trillion dollars. Meanwhile, Alphabet’s second trillion took 1,075 days; Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft, the first companies to cross $2 trillion, both needed 516 days. And blowing them all out of the water was Nvidia (NVDA), which surged to $2 trillion from $1 trillion in just 180 days.

Amazon shares needed to close above $192.18 on Wednesday to clear the $2 trillion threshold. The stock finished up almost 4% at $193.61. Its intraday high was near $195.