Amazon was founded on July 5, 1994, by Jeff Bezos in Bellevue, Washington.

Quick Scoop

  • Founding date: July 5, 1994.
  • Founder: Jeff Bezos, a former Wall Street executive who left D. E. Shaw & Co. to start the company.
  • Original name and idea: Initially incorporated in 1994 as “Cadabra, Inc.” and conceived as an online bookstore run from Bezos’s garage in Bellevue.
  • Launch as a website: The Amazon online bookstore opened to customers in July 1995, shipping books across all U.S. states and many countries.

How Amazon Started

Amazon began as an online marketplace for books, taking advantage of the early growth of the commercial internet in the mid‑1990s. Bezos chose the Seattle/Bellevue area for its tech talent and logistics advantages, including proximity to book distribution hubs.

From that small garage operation, Amazon adopted an aggressive growth strategy focused on low prices, wide selection, and customer-centric policies such as user reviews and convenient online ordering. Within a few years, the company moved beyond books into music, videos, electronics, and eventually a vast range of retail categories, earning the nickname “the everything store.”

TL;DR: Amazon was founded on July 5, 1994, by Jeff Bezos in Bellevue, Washington, originally as an online bookstore run from his garage.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.