Company profile
SEC EDGAR ↗- Industry
- Retail-Catalog & Mail-Order Houses
- Listed
- Nasdaq: AMZN
- Incorporated
- DE
- Headquarters
- Seattle, WA
- Fiscal year end
- Dec 31
Financials
FY2025- Revenue
- $716.9B
- Net income
- $77.7B
- Total assets
- $818.0B
| Fiscal year | Revenue | Net income | Total assets |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | $716.9B | $77.7B | $818.0B |
| FY2024 | $638.0B | $59.2B | $624.9B |
| FY2023 | $574.8B | $30.4B | $527.9B |
| FY2022 | $514.0B | −$2.72B | $462.7B |
| FY2021 | $469.8B | $33.4B | $420.5B |
| FY2020 | $386.1B | $21.3B | $321.2B |
Reported fiscal years from SEC filings (10-K) — SEC EDGAR ↗. Stratrix is a strategy publication, not a real-time financial data service.
In depth
The analyses
The Adjacency Expansion · Growth & Portfolio
Amazon Tried to Build Healthcare Twice. Then It Started Writing Checks.
Amazon's two homegrown health ventures - Haven and Amazon Care - both died. Then it spent roughly $4.65 billion buying PillPack and One Medical instead. The pivot from build to buy isn't a setback. It's the whole strategy - and it still has a hole in the middle.
8 min
The Adjacency Engine · Growth & Portfolio
Amazon's $108B Cloud Grew Out of an Infrastructure Crisis — and One Habit Rivals Failed to Copy
The legend says Bezos always meant to build the everything-store, then sell off spare servers as AWS. Both are myths. Amazon's $108B cloud business grew out of an infrastructure crisis — and one habit competitors couldn't copy.
8 min
The Adjacency Expansion · Growth & Portfolio
Marketplace, Prime, and AWS All Started as Retail Plumbing Rented Out at a Margin
The story says a bookstore became the everything store, then conquered the cloud. The real pattern is duller and far more dangerous: every Amazon business — Marketplace, Prime, AWS — started as internal plumbing built for retail, then rented out at a margin.
8 min
The Money Machine · Business Model
Amazon's $56.21B Ad Line Charges the Same Sellers Twice for Nearly Free Shelf Space
Amazon's advertising line hit $56.21B in 2024, up over 20% year on year - and it's not the 'hidden third engine' the headlines call it. It's the same sellers being charged twice, on shelf space that costs Amazon almost nothing to sell.
7 min
The Cannibalization Choice · Decision Forks
Amazon Failed at Auctions and zShops Before Marketplace — Which Now Moves 60% of Units Sold
The legend says Bezos bravely opened Amazon to rivals on its own pages. The record says he swung and missed twice — Auctions drew 'seven people,' zShops drew 'no customers' — before stumbling onto the model that now moves 60% of units sold.
7 min
The Counterfactual · Decision Forks
The Fire Phone Left a $170M Writedown, $83M of Unsold Phones, and a Blindsided Alexa Team
The tidy legend says Amazon sacrificed the Fire Phone as a clever experiment that birthed Alexa. The records say otherwise: a $170M writedown, $83M of unsold phones in a warehouse, and a voice-assistant team that didn't even know the phone existed.
7 min
The Crisis Response · Crisis & Reinvention
Amazon's Antitrust Defense Is Built on Lower Prices. Its Own Files Say It Raised Them.
Amazon's reply to the FTC is the classic one: we exist to cut prices for shoppers. But the unredacted complaint quotes internal docs calling a price-raising algorithm 'an incredible success' that booked over $1.4 billion in excess profit.
8 min
The Cross-Subsidy · Business Model
The Bookstore Quietly Became an Ad Company and a Cloud Company. You Still Think It Sells Books.
Everyone says AWS subsidizes Amazon's loss-making retail. That's a decade out of date. In 2024 North America retail earned $25B in operating income, and a $56B ad business hides inside the storefront. Amazon is a three-engine machine, not a one-engine charity.
7 min
The Cross-Subsidy · Business Model
What AWS's 37% Margins Buy Amazon: The Freedom to Run Retail Thin on Purpose
Everyone says AWS secretly funds a money-losing store. It doesn't - North America retail earned $25B at a 6.4% margin in 2024. What AWS's 37% margins actually buy is the freedom to run retail thin on purpose, for as long as it takes.
8 min
The Culture Doctrine · People & Control
Amazon's 'Day 2 Is Death' Line Was a 1997 Throwaway About the Internet — Gospel Came in 2016
Everyone thinks Bezos preached the 'Day 2 is death' doctrine at Amazon's founding. He didn't. The phrase began in 1997 as a throwaway line about the internet—and only became a management gospel in 2016, a 19-year gap that reveals how Amazon manufactures continuity.
7 min
The Bet · Decision Forks
AWS Began When a Retailer Decided It Was a Technology Company First
The legend says Amazon sold its idle holiday servers and stumbled into a cloud empire. Its own CTO calls that a myth — AWS would have burned through that excess in two months. The truth is harder to copy: a retailer that decided, deliberately, it was a technology company first.
8 min
The Ecosystem Lock-In · Moat & Competition
Prime's Flywheel Is Real. It's Also Partly Coerced.
Prime members spend roughly 2× non-members and renew at ~93% in year one. The loyalty story is real — but in 2025 the FTC made Amazon pay $2.5B for engineering a slice of that retention with dark patterns and a cancellation maze its own staff called the 'Iliad.'
8 min
The Loss Leader · Business Model
Amazon Sold Alexa at a Loss to Win a Sale That Never Came
Amazon priced its Echo speakers below cost on a single bet: people would shop by voice. They didn't. The devices division bled more than $25 billion between 2017 and 2021, and the monetization engine that was supposed to pay for the giveaway never turned on.
7 min
The Loss Leader · Business Model
Bezos Priced the Kindle at 'Roughly Breakeven' — Each Device Is a Storefront in Your Home
Everyone says Amazon sells hardware at a loss. Bezos never said that - he said 'roughly breakeven.' The distinction is the whole strategy: the device isn't the product, it's the storefront you pay to install in your own home.
7 min
The Market-Entry Gambit · Decision Forks
Amazon Fell to Under 1% in China — the Culprit Was an Org Chart in Seattle
Amazon's China share collapsed from a high-water mark to under 1% by 2019, and the easy story blames Alibaba. The real culprit was an org chart: Seattle never trusted local managers to localize. India is the same company that finally learned the lesson.
8 min
The Moat Anatomy · Moat & Competition
AWS Turned Its 4-5 Year Solo Window Into an API Standard and Capital Nobody Can Outspend
Microsoft showed up four years late, Google five. Both still took share — which proves arriving first didn't seal it. AWS turned a 4-5 year uncontested window into a moat of integration debt, an API standard, and capital nobody can outspend.
8 min
The Price Climb · Business Model
Amazon Raised Prime's Price 76% and Almost Nobody Left. Here's the Trick.
Prime went from $79 in 2005 to $139 in 2022 - a 76% climb across three hikes - with barely a flinch from members. The trick wasn't the price. It was teaching 200 million people to stop counting it.
7 min
The Vertical Integration · Boundaries of the Firm
Amazon Opened Its Delivery Network to Outside Firms in 2026 — and UPS and FedEx Fell Nearly 10%
Everyone blames the 2013 UPS holiday meltdown. But Amazon was already drafting a global delivery network that year — and in 2026 it opened that network to outside firms, sending UPS and FedEx shares down nearly 10%.
8 min
The Vertical Integration · Business Model
Amazon's Stack Grew One Bottleneck Fix at a Time — Now AWS Out-Earns the Retail Arm
Everyone thinks Amazon's vertical integration was a master plan. It wasn't — each layer was built to fix an internal problem, then rented out. AWS alone now throws off $39.8B in operating income, more than the entire North American retail business that birthed it.
8 min