In 1994, Jeff Bezos left his job at a quantitative hedge fund after coming across a staggering statistic: Internet usage was growing at 2,300% per year. That inspired him to start an online store -- Bezos started with books because they offered more choice than any other product category -- and he founded Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) in the garage of a three-bedroom house in Bellevue, Washington.

Amazon eventually expanded beyond books, earning a reputation as the "everything store," and Bezos took the company public on May 15, 1997. The stock has since soared more than 117,000%, which equates to an astonishing return of 32% annually over the last 25 years. Put another way, if you had invested $1,000 in Amazon stock at its IPO, it would be worth more than $1.1 million today.

That said, Amazon has fallen on hard times recently. High inflation has weighed on its bottom line, leading to a GAAP loss in the first and second quarters of 2022 -- its first quarterly losses since 2015. Those headwinds have sent its share price tumbling, and the stock currently trades 38% off its high.

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Source Fool.com