Amazon is a US group founded in 1994 with dual headquarters in Seattle (Washington) and Arlington County (Virginia). Originally launched as an online bookseller, the company today operates in online retail, logistics, advertising, entertainment and, above all, cloud computing. Andy Jassy has been chief executive since July 2021, while founder Jeff Bezos serves as Executive Chairman.
Dual headquarters
According to Wikipedia, Amazon's headquarters spans more than 40 buildings across the adjacent Seattle neighborhoods of South Lake Union, Denny Triangle and Downtown. After the originally planned second headquarters, "HQ2" in Long Island City, New York, was cancelled in 2019, Amazon instead built an equally ranked second headquarters in Arlington County, Virginia; the company has officially operated dual headquarters ever since.
Three segments: retail and cloud
Amazon reports in the North America, International and AWS segments. For 2025 the company posted revenue of roughly US$716.9 billion (up 12% from US$638.0 billion in 2024): North America grew 10% to US$426.3 billion, International grew 13% to US$161.9 billion, and AWS grew 20% to US$128.7 billion. Despite its smaller revenue share, AWS was by far the most profitable segment, with US$45.6 billion in operating income (2024: US$39.8 billion), ahead of North America's US$29.6 billion. Advertising is a further pillar: according to Amazon, revenue from advertising services (including sponsored product listings on the marketplace and ads on Prime Video and Twitch) passed US$68 billion for the first time in 2025, with US$21.3 billion in Q4 alone, up 22%.
Cloud and AI
According to market researcher Synergy Research Group, AWS remains the cloud-infrastructure market leader with about 29% share in Q3 2025, ahead of Microsoft Azure (20%) and Google Cloud (13%). Through AWS, Amazon offers AI services including the Bedrock platform, on which more than 100,000 customers run models such as those from Anthropic, according to Amazon. For AI workloads, Amazon develops its own chips (Trainium for training, Inferentia for inference); the "Project Rainier" data center built for Anthropic includes nearly half a million Trainium2 chips, according to Amazon.
Partnership with Anthropic
Amazon says it has invested roughly US$8 billion in the AI lab Anthropic and, in autumn 2025, agreed to invest a further US$5 billion plus an option for up to US$20 billion more — potentially up to US$33 billion in total. In return, Anthropic committed to spending more than US$100 billion on AWS technologies, including current and future Trainium generations, over the next decade and to using up to 5 gigawatts of compute capacity, according to Amazon.
Key figures
For Q4 2025, Amazon reported revenue of US$213.4 billion (up 14%) and quarterly net income of US$21.2 billion; on a trailing-twelve-month basis, net income reached roughly US$77.7 billion. Wikipedia puts the workforce at about 1,576,000 employees. For data centers and AI infrastructure, Amazon plans capital expenditures of roughly US$200 billion, according to the company; trailing-twelve-month CapEx already stood at US$128.3 billion. The shares trade on Nasdaq under the ticker AMZN (ISIN US0231351067).
This profile is a neutral description and is not investment advice.