The Company

Amazon is a global technology and retail conglomerate that operates a leading online marketplace and physical retail footprint, a dominant cloud-computing platform (AWS), a fast-growing digital advertising business, subscription services (Prime), and a suite of devices and media offerings. It combines retail logistics, marketplace services, cloud infrastructure, and advertising to serve consumers, sellers, enterprises and developers worldwide. Q4 Capital+1

Financials

Total net sales (2024): $638.0 billion (up ~11% vs. 2023). Amazon+1
Reported segment sales (2024): North America $387.5B (≈60.7% of total), International $142.9B (≈22.4%), AWS $107.6B (≈16.9%). Q4 Capital+1
Operating income (2024): Operating income increased to $68.6B in 2024 (vs. $36.9B in 2023). Amazon
Notable sub-revenues (2024): Advertising ≈ $56.2B; Subscription services (Prime etc.) ≈ $44.4B. (These line items are included within the geographic segment totals reported above.) Adweek+1

Management comments

Q3 2025

AWS reaccelerated to 20.2% yoy. 132 Bill$ Annual Run Rate.
Backlog grew to 200 Bill$ by Q3 quarter end. Several unannounced deals in October not included that should be more than all deal volume in Q3.
Added more than 3.8GW of power, datacenter and chips in the last few months. Now double the AWS capacity in 2022. Expect to double again by 2027. Aggressively adding capacity.
AWS Agentcore, Bedrock & Sagemaker enabling companies to build their agentic apps.

TAM / CAGR

Amazon participates in multiple very large and fast-growing markets; below are recent market-size estimates and short-term CAGRs for the principal markets Amazon serves:

Global e-commerce market: estimates vary by firm, but large market-size estimates cluster in the multiple-tens of trillions of USD range — e.g., one provider estimates the global e-commerce market at roughly ~$26T (2024) with multi-year CAGR forecasts in the high-teens percent (≈18–19% to 2030). (Amazon’s retail business is a material share of this market.) Grand View Research+1
Cloud infrastructure / cloud computing market: estimated at hundreds of billions today and projected to grow at ~18–21% CAGR over the next 5+ years depending on the report (examples show market sizes in the $750B–$1.1T range for 2024 with strong multi-year growth). AWS competes in this market as a top provider. Grand View Research+1
Digital / online advertising market: global digital ad spend is also large (hundreds of billions) and forecasts commonly show mid-teens CAGRs (e.g., ~14–16% in some 2024–2026 forecasts). Amazon’s retail media (ads) is a growing slice of that market. The Business Research Company+1

Note: Amazon spans multiple TAMs (retail, cloud, ads, streaming/media, devices, grocery, etc.), so a single “Amazon TAM” is not meaningful; the items above are the principal adjacent market estimates and their approximate growth rates. Grand View Research+1

Products (services / product lines) — revenue context

Below is a compact view mapping Amazon’s primary reported segments and important sub-lines, with their share of total 2024 net sales. Where Amazon reports geography-based segments (North America / International / AWS), I show those numbers; advertising and subscription figures are shown separately as notable sub-revenues but are included inside the geographic totals in the company filings.

Product / Service line	2024 revenue (USD)	% of Amazon total (approx.)	Notes
North America retail (online + physical + marketplace, includes ads & subscriptions originating in NA)	$387.5B	~60.7%	Company-reported geographic segment. Q4 Capital
International retail (online + physical + marketplace, includes ads & subscriptions outside NA)	$142.9B	~22.4%	Company-reported geographic segment. Q4 Capital
AWS (cloud services)	$107.6B	~16.9%	Reported separately by the company; highest-margin segment historically. Q4 Capital
Amazon Advertising (retail media, ads across site, video, display, streaming)	$56.2B	~8.8%	Included within geographic retail segment totals but highlighted because of scale and margin profile. Adweek
Subscription services (Prime, Prime Video, Music, other recurring)	~$44.4B	~7.0%	Included within geographic totals. Prime underpins customer retention and lifetime value. Marketplace Pulse
Physical stores & devices (Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh, physical stores, Echo/Kindle hardware, etc.)	Small single-digit % of total (physical stores ~3% range)	~3% (physical stores)	Devices and stores are strategic/revenue contributors but small vs. online retail and AWS. Capital One Shopping+1

Important: the three company segments Amazon reports (North America, International, AWS) are the authoritative revenue buckets in its 10-K. Advertising and subscription revenues are important subcomponents that the company (and analysts) track separately but they are reported inside the geographic segment totals. SEC+1

Business Model

Amazon’s model combines: (1) first-party retail (buy and resell inventory), (2) third-party marketplace (platform fees, commission, fulfillment services), (3) subscription (Prime recurring fees), (4) AWS (pay-as-you-go cloud services and enterprise contracts), (5) advertising/retail media (sponsored listings, display/video), and (6) device/media/grocery/physical retail. The company pursues scale, low prices, broad selection and fast delivery to drive customer loyalty, then monetizes through marketplace take rates, services (Fulfillment by Amazon), Prime fees, ads, and high-margin enterprise cloud services. Capital investment (logistics, data centers) and technology (AI, logistics automation, data/ads targeting) are key competitive moats. Q4 Capital+1

Customers

Consumers: retail customers who buy goods on Amazon.com and international marketplaces (individual shoppers worldwide). Q4 Capital
Third-party sellers: millions of merchants who use Amazon’s marketplace, logistics, and advertising products. SEC
Enterprises and developers: AWS customers (startups to largest global enterprises) using compute, storage, AI/ML platforms and managed services. Q4 Capital
Advertisers and brands: CPGs, direct-to-consumer brands, publishers and agencies buying retail and streaming ad inventory. Adweek

Competitors — top 3 (with directly competing products)

Walmart (retail & marketplace) — directly competes with Amazon’s e-commerce, grocery (Fresh/Whole Foods adjacency), and logistics/fulfillment initiatives; Walmart has leveraged omnichannel and its stores as fulfillment hubs. PYMNTS+1
Microsoft (Azure) — primary cloud competitor to AWS; competes on IaaS/PaaS, enterprise agreements, and increasingly on AI cloud services. Microsoft also competes for enterprise AI and cloud workloads. TechRadar
Alphabet / Google (Search Ads, Google Cloud) — competes with Amazon on digital advertising (Google search/display video) and in cloud infrastructure (Google Cloud). For advertising and video/streaming ad inventory, Alphabet is a direct competitor. The Business Research Company+1

(Other important rivals vary by line: Meta competes for ad dollars; Alibaba/JD compete in international e-commerce; Netflix/Disney+ compete for streaming attention; but the three above map cleanly to Amazon’s largest product matchups.) Adweek+1

Founding History

Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in July 1994 as an online bookstore operating out of his garage in Bellevue, Washington. The company rapidly expanded product categories and services (from books → electronics → marketplace, Prime, AWS, devices and media). It went public in 1997 and, over decades, evolved from an e-commerce disruptor to a multi-product technology and infrastructure company. Leadership transitioned from founder Jeff Bezos to Andy Jassy in 2021 (Jassy had previously run AWS). Amazon’s history is characterized by heavy reinvestment, customer-centric experimentation, and expansion into adjacent markets.