Amazon surpasses $2 trillion in stock market value for the first time

Amazon.com Inc. surpassed $2 trillion in market value for the first time in afternoon trading Wednesday.

The boost in Amazon’s stock valuation comes just over a week after Nvidia hit $3 trillion and briefly became the most valuable company on Wall Street. Nvidia’s chips are used to power many AI applications and its valuation has skyrocketed as a result.

Amazon has also invested heavily in AI as global interest in the technology grows. The company has focused primarily on business-oriented products, such as AI models and a chatbot called Q, which Amazon makes available to companies using its AWS cloud computing unit.

In April, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said AI capabilities had reaccelerated AWS’s growth and that it was on the verge of reaching $100 billion in annual revenue. The unit had slowed growth last year as companies cut expenses amid high inflation.

The tech giant has also invested $4 billion in San Francisco-based AI company Anthropic to develop so-called foundational models that underpin generative AI systems. Amazon also makes and designs its own AI chips.