Amazon: Facts and Statistics

There are probably few people in the world who do not know what Amazon is. Anyone who ever searched for a product to buy online was directed to this retailer. As Amazon constantly grabs the headlines in the news about financial markets or wealthy businesses, even those who do not shop on the internet have still heard about Amazon’s success or Jeff Bezos’s riches. Yet, although Amazon is constantly in the news, there are some less widely circulated facts about the company. They are listed below:  

• Despite starting as a bookseller, Amazon.com is a tech company whose business centers around simplifying online transactions for customers.
• Amazon owns a wide range of products: Amazon Game Studio, Amazon Drive, a cloud storage application, and Amazon Web Services (AWS), a comprehensive cloud platform, used by many technology representatives worldwide.  
• Amazon owns the One Click trademark, patented in 1999. This patent expired in the United States on September 11, 2017, and has not been renewed yet.
• As of May 2025, Amazon owns over 100 subsidiaries and brands spanning various sectors, including e-commerce, cloud computing, media, healthcare, robotics, and artificial intelligence.
• Its most well-known brands are Whole Foods, audio-book seller Audible, book review site GoodReads, and live-streaming platform Twitch.
• Amazon gives money to charities through Amazon Smile. People shopping on smile.amazon.com, which offers the same items and prices as Amazon, contribute 0.5% of eligible purchases to their chosen charitable organizations.  
• In 2012, Amazon acquired Kiva Systems, a robotic company, for $775 million. Over 200,000 mobile robots now work in the Amazon warehouse network, carrying product shelves to workers and reading barcodes on the ground for directions.
• Amazon has its brick-and-mortar counterpart, Amazon Books, which integrates online and offline shopping. Amazon’s first physical book store opened in 2015 in Seattle, near the University of Washington.

Billions of people are familiar with the Amazon brand, while millions are its customers. More than 89% of US buyers agree that they would rather buy products from Amazon than other e-commerce sites. As Forbes once stated, “Amazon has earned our trust by delivering the products we want, on time, intact, in the same branded brown boxes—consistently.” 

The latest statistics presented below highlight Amazon’s potential to become the number one company in the world:

• Amazon is worth over $2.166 trillion as of 2025.
• Amazon is among the top 5 most valued companies in the world, after Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Apple.
• In 2025, Amazon has more than 310 million active users worldwide, with approximately 230 million based in the United States.
• Amazon ships to more than 100 countries, excluding Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, and Syria.
• Over 200 million people globally have an Amazon Prime subscription.
• As of May 2025, there are over 220 million Amazon Prime subscribers worldwide, with approximately 180.1 million users in the United States. 
• Amazon Prime is available in 23 countries.
• Amazon Prime video has approximately 200 million users.
• The ad-supported version of Prime Video reaches over 130 million monthly viewers in the United States.
• Amazon Prime membership services generated $44.374 billion in 2024.
• On average, a Prime subscriber spend about $1,400 per year on Amazon.
• Amazon.com receives 2.2 billion visits per month.
• In April 2025, Amazon.com received approximately 2.6 billion visits, with an average session duration of 11 minutes and 33 seconds.
• Amazon owns more than 90% market share in five product categories: Batteries (97%), Kitchen & Dining (94%), Home Improvement Tools (93%), Golf (92%), and Skin Care (91%).
• Amazon approximately 37.6% of the U.S. e-commerce market, significantly ahead of Walmart (6.4%), Apple (3.6%), and eBay (3%).
• IAs of early 2025, there are about 9.7 million active sellers on Amazon globally, with over 1.9 million based in the U.S.
• Third-party sellers accounted for an all-time high of 62% of units sold on Amazon in Q4 2024.
• Approximately 25% of Amazon sellers earn over $100,000 annually, with 13% surpassing $250,000 in annual earnings.
• Amazon has employed approximately 1,556,000 full-time and part-time workers as of 2025.
• Amazon’s advertising revenue reached $17.28 billion in 2025, marking an 18% year-over-year increase.

Sources: Amazon, Statista 

• Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in late 1994 and was its CEO for more than 25 years, stepping down from this position on July 5, 2021.
• In 1997, when Amazon became a public company, Bezos’s net worth reached $120 million.
• Presently, Bezos is considered the second richest person in the world after Elon Musk: according to Forbes, his net worth amounts to approximately $201.6 billion as on May 2025.  
• Amazon’s former CEO reached the record $200 billion net worth mark in August 2020.
• Jeff Bezos invests approximately $1 billion annually into Blue Origin, his aerospace company.
• As of 2024, his total investment in Blue Origin is estimated to be between $10 billion and $20 billion.
• In 2010, Bezos sold 6,000,000 Amazon shares worth $793 million.
• Bezos purchased The Washington Post in August 2013 for $250 million.
• In 2013, Jeff Bezos purchased The Washington Post for $250 million because he believed that journalism is the main engine of democracy.
• Under Bezos’s ownership, the newspaper has experienced significant editorial changes, leading to concerns about journalistic independence and a decline in staff retention and subscriber numbers.

Sources: Wikipedia, Forbes

Amazon reported its 2025 first-quarter earnings on Thursday, May 1, with EPS of $1.62, $0.62 better than the year-ago reading of $1.00. Revenue for the quarter came in at $155.67 billion versus $143.31 billion, growing by 8.6% on a year-on-year (YoY) basis.

Its gross profit also grew in Q1 2025 to $78.69 billion from $70.68 billion in the same period last year, while margin expanded slightly to 50.6% from 49.3% in the same period last year.

Amazon reported total revenue of $638 billion in 2024, marking an 11% increase from $575 billion in 2023. For the trailing twelve months (TTM) ending March 31, 2025, Amazon’s revenue reached $650.3 billion, reflecting a 10.08% year-over-year growth.  

Amazon’s R&D expenses for 2024 were approximately $88.5 billion, a 3.41% increase from the previous year. In the first quarter of 2025, Amazon’s R&D spending was $23.0 billion, up 12.58% year-over-year. Amazon successfully launched its first 27 production satellites for Project Kuiper in April 2025, aiming to provide global broadband internet access.

In 2025, Amazon plans to invest over $100 billion in AI infrastructure, including the development of its Trainium2 AI chips and expansion of AWS services. Amazon is integrating AI into its healthcare services, including its primary care provider One Medical and online pharmacy, as well as offering AWS tools for drug discovery.

The table below shows the inexorable upward trajectory of Amazon’s annual revenue since 2009:

Amazon Annual Revenue (Billions of US$)

Sources: InvestingPro, Statista

Amazon Annual Revenue by Segment from 2018 to 2024

Amazon excels at diversifying its revenue streams to increase its profits. Indeed, the company’s success partly comes from its ability to use its various business divisions to support and drive growth for other divisions. Far from focusing narrowly and exclusively on retail e-commerce, Amazon has also established an enviable reputation in such areas as cloud computing, online advertising, and digital payments.

The tables below shed light on how each division drives Amazon’s business, individually and collectively.

Amazon Retail E-Commerce Sales Worldwide (Billions of US$)

Source: Statista, Amazon

Amazon Web Services Revenue (Billions of US$)

Amazon’s web services are the largest cloud infrastructure in the world. They are offered in 26 regions globally and have more than 200 services, ranging from core computing and storage to AI tools and low-code or no-code solutions for products and app developers. The contribution of AWS to the company’s overall revenue has consistently increased.

Advertising Services Revenue from Q3 2020 to Q4 2022 (Billions of US$)

As of May 2025, Amazon’s advertising business has demonstrated robust growth, positioning the company as a formidable player in the digital advertising landscape. In Q1 2025, Amazon’s advertising revenue growth outpaced its overall sales growth of 9%, highlighting the advertising segment’s increasing significance to the company’s financial performance.

Amazon’s advertising services generated $13.9 billion, marking an 18% year-over-year increase from Q1 2024. Revenue reached $17.3 billion, up 18% compared to Q4 2023. Amazon’s advertising revenue totaled $56.2 billion in 2024, reflecting a 20% increase from 2023.

These developments underscore Amazon’s ascending trajectory in the digital advertising sector, challenging established leaders and expanding its influence across various advertising channels.

Amazon Prime Services Revenue (Billions of US$)

Amazon Prime Services generated approximately $40.21 billion in revenue in 2023. In 2024, Amazon Prime Services revenue increased to about $44.38 billion, marking a 10% year-over-year growth. These figures encompass revenues from Amazon Prime membership fees and other subscription services, including Prime Video, Prime Music, and Kindle Unlimited.

Sources: Statista 

Amazon Prime was launched in 2005 as an Amazon membership service offering free two-day shipping. Although people were reluctant to pay the Prime membership during the first years, they have increasingly been warming up to the service since 2011. In the first quarter of 2018, there were 100 million Prime members worldwide. In 2022, Amazon announced that it had 157.4 million members across 22 countries.

Amazon Prime User Growth in the US

As of May 2025, Amazon Prime continues to be a dominant force in the U.S. subscription market, with significant growth in membership and revenue. Approximately 180.1 million U.S. users are Amazon Prime members, accounting for about 82% of U.S. households in 2025. Amazon Prime’s consistent growth in both membership and revenue underscores its strong position in the U.S. and global markets. The table below reflects the increase in Amazon Prime subscribers since 2013:

Source: Statista

How Many Countries Have Amazon Prime?

Amazon Prime is available in over 22 countries. Since 2007, Amazon has offered its Prime Membership in the following nine countries:

Source: Wikipedia

Amazon Prime Day Sales

Amazon launched the Prime Day Sales event in 2015. It is a deal event conducted once a year and available solely to Amazon Prime members. In 2021, sales on Amazon during Prime Day amounted to $11.19 billion, which constituted a 7.7% jump from $10.39 billion a year earlier.  

According to the company, Amazon’s Prime Day in 2022 was the biggest Prime Day event. Prime members worldwide purchased more than 100,000 items per minute and ended the event with 300 million items heading to their home addresses. Amazon said that people saved over $1.7 billion and brought the company $11.9 billion in sales. Most items were bought in the following three departments: Household Essentials (29%), Health & Beauty (28%), and Consumer Electronics (27%). The table below shows how steadily people’s shopping appetite has been whetted over the years since the inception of the event:

Sources: Forbes

Amazon has become one of the most powerful and respected companies in the world. It has earned its enviable reputation by uncompromisingly focusing on customers, being willing to experiment, and learning from its mistakes when failing. Amazon’s logistics and shipping have reached the speed and professionalism that no other company can match. The retailer’s venture into advertising has brought success and disputed Google’s predominance as a digital-ad titan. Amazon’s foray into healthcare is expected to buoy the sector. Its constant employment of more workers contributes to positive US Non-Farm Payroll results. By investing in a private spaceflight company, Jeff Bezos has also proved that for him, quite literally, the sky is the limit.