Amazon’s market capitalization surpassed the $2 trillion mark for the first time on Wednesday, as optimism about artificial intelligence and the possibility of interest rate cuts this year drove demand for technology stocks.
Shares rose 3.4% to $192.70, making the e-commerce giant the fifth company to join the $2 trillion market cap club, joining tech giants Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia and Alphabet.
U.S. stock indexes have posted strong gains this year, fueled by continued enthusiasm for AI, optimism about the resilience of the U.S. economy and the possibility of interest rate easing by the Federal Reserve.
Wall Street was trading at record levels, mainly thanks to large-cap stocks such as Nvidia and Amazon, whose future cash flows are expected to benefit from low interest rates.
Amazon’s shares, which were added to the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average in February, are up more than 26% this year.
The company became the fifth-largest U.S. company by market capitalization in February, after Nvidia moved up the rankings.
Amazon Web Services is the world’s largest cloud services provider, and growth at the Amazon division has bounced back from a decline over the past year thanks to a surge in adoption of AI technologies.
The firm has also invested in AI startup Anthropic and robotics company Figure, hoping to cash in on the AI boom.
Late last year, Amazon unveiled a new generation of custom-designed chips for use in data centers, targeting machine learning training and generative artificial intelligence applications.
