AMAZON COM INC (AMZN)

Amazon.com, Inc. and its subsidiaries seek to be Earth's most customer-centric company, guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. The company sells products and services through online and physical stores, and also provides technology services, advertising, and content publishing programs. It was founded by Jeffrey Bezos in 1994.

Operations are organized into three segments: North America, International, and Amazon Web Services (AWS). The stores allow hundreds of millions of unique products to be sold by Amazon and by third parties across dozens of product categories. Amazon also manufactures and sells electronic devices including Kindle, Fire tablet, Fire TV, Echo, Ring, Blink, and eero, and develops and produces media content. It offers subscription services such as Amazon Prime, which includes fast, free shipping on tens of millions of items, movies and series, live sports, and other benefits. Seller programs let third parties sell in Amazon's stores and use its fulfillment services, with Amazon earning fixed fees, a percentage of sales, per-unit activity fees, interest, or a combination, and it is not the seller of record in these transactions. AWS offers on-demand technology services including compute, storage, database, analytics, and artificial intelligence and machine learning. Amazon also provides advertising services such as sponsored ads, display, and video advertising, and programs that let authors, publishers, musicians, filmmakers, Twitch streamers, and app developers publish and sell content.

Its primary customer sets are consumers, sellers, developers, enterprises, content creators, advertisers, and employees. Consumers reach Amazon through its websites, mobile apps, Alexa, devices, streaming, and physical stores. AWS serves developers and enterprises of all sizes, including start-ups, government agencies, and academic institutions. Advertising customers include sellers, vendors, publishers, and authors. The business is seasonal, with higher sales volume historically in the fourth quarter.

Orders are fulfilled through North America and International fulfillment networks that Amazon operates, co-sourced and outsourced arrangements in certain countries, digital delivery, and physical stores. Customer service centers operate globally, supplemented by co-sourced arrangements. Amazon competes in a rapidly evolving market against retailers, media publishers and distributors, search engines and shopping discovery services, e-commerce and logistics providers, IT and cloud services companies, consumer electronics makers, grocers, advertising providers, and healthcare providers. Key competitive factors in retail are selection, price, and convenience, including fast and reliable fulfillment. Amazon relies on trademarks, copyrights, patents, trade secrets, and confidentiality agreements to protect its intellectual property. As of December 31, 2025, it employed approximately 1,576,000 full-time and part-time employees, supplemented by independent contractors and temporary personnel.