Companies Owned by Amazon (2026)

Is Amazon a Delaware company, and why does that matter?

Yes. Amazon.com, Inc. is incorporated in Delaware, even though its headquarters, engineers, and fulfillment network are spread across Seattle and the rest of the world. This trips people up constantly: incorporation is about which state’s law governs the legal entity, not where the building or the warehouses are. Amazon chose Delaware for the same reasons most large US public companies do, and so do the majority of its US operating subsidiaries.

That matters here because it is the thread connecting a trillion-dollar retailer to a one-person business. When you form a Delaware LLC, you are stepping into the exact same legal framework Amazon’s entities use — the same statute, the same Division of Corporations, the same registered agent requirement. The scale is different by many orders of magnitude, but the machinery is identical. Understanding what Amazon actually owns, and how it holds those brands, is a useful way to see that machinery in action.

There is a practical reason a founder should care about all of this rather than treat it as trivia. The single most repeated objection from people forming their first US company is some version of “isn’t Delaware only for big corporations?” The honest answer is that Delaware is for big corporations andfor the smallest possible business, because the entity type — an LLC or a corporation — is the same legal product regardless of who buys it. Amazon’s subsidiaries do not get a special, better version of the Delaware LLC. They get the identical document you would file, governed by the identical statute. The difference is entirely in what each owner does with the entity afterward.

Throughout this page we have tried to be careful about the difference between a company Amazon ownsand one it merely invests in, partners with, licenses to, or tried and failed to buy. Ownership is a specific legal relationship — typically control of the entity through a controlling equity stake — and the popular “companies owned by Amazon” lists circulating online frequently blur that line. We have omitted anything we could not verify, and we flag the most common mistakes in their own section below.

What companies does Amazon actually own?

Amazon has acquired well over a hundred companies since the late 1990s, and it has also built large businesses internally. The brands below are ones whose ownership by Amazon is well documented. Amazon typically keeps an acquired company’s name and lets it operate semi-independently while the underlying entity sits inside the group.

• Amazon Web Services (AWS).Built in-house, not bought. AWS is Amazon’s cloud-computing division and one of the most valuable parts of the entire company. It is run through entities such as Amazon Web Services, Inc.
• Whole Foods Market.Acquired in 2017 for roughly $13.7 billion — Amazon’s largest acquisition — bringing it into physical grocery retail.
• Amazon MGM Studios (MGM).Amazon bought MGM for about $8.45 billion, closing in 2022, and rebranded its studio operation as Amazon MGM Studios. MGM’s catalog includes the James Bond and Rocky franchises.
• One Medical. The primary-care provider, acquired for about $3.9 billion, closing in 2023.
• Twitch. The live-streaming platform, bought in 2014 for roughly $970 million.
• Ring. The smart-doorbell and home-security maker, acquired in 2018 for around $1 billion.
• Zappos. The online shoe and apparel retailer, acquired in 2009.
• Zoox. The autonomous-vehicle company, acquired in 2020 for roughly $1.2 billion.
• Audible. The audiobook platform, bought in 2008.
• IMDb.The movie and TV database, one of Amazon’s earliest acquisitions, dating to 1998.
• Goodreads. The book-cataloging social network, acquired in 2013.
• AbeBooks. The marketplace for rare and out-of-print books, acquired in 2008.
• Eero. The mesh Wi-Fi hardware maker, acquired in 2019.
• Wondery. The podcast network, brought into Amazon to sit alongside its audio businesses.
• ComiXology. The digital-comics platform, acquired in 2014.
• PillPack. The online pharmacy, acquired in 2018, which helped seed Amazon Pharmacy.
• Woot. The daily-deals retailer, acquired in 2010.
• Shopbop. The fashion retailer, an early Amazon acquisition.
• Annapurna Labs.The chip-design firm acquired by AWS in 2015, which now designs custom silicon used across Amazon’s cloud.

This is not the full list — Amazon owns logistics firms, smaller tech startups, and internal brands too — but every entry above is a company whose ownership by Amazon is reliably documented. We have left out anything we could not confirm, because a guess dressed up as a fact helps nobody.

Two patterns are worth noticing in this list, because they reappear at founder scale. First, the biggest pieces of Amazon are not all acquisitions: AWS and Project Kuiper were built internally, and AWS alone may be worth more than everything Amazon has ever bought combined. A business does not have to grow by purchase; it can grow new divisions inside the same entity, exactly as a solo Delaware LLCowner can launch a second product line without forming a second company. Second, Amazon almost always keeps the acquired brand’s name. Twitch is still Twitch, Ring is still Ring, Whole Foods is still Whole Foods. The legal owner changed; the public-facing brand did not. That separation between the legal entity and the trading name is one of the first things a new founder learns when they choose an LLC name and then operate under it.

Which brands are often confused as owned by Amazon but are NOT?

Plenty of widely shared lists include companies Amazon does not own. The confusion usually comes from a failed acquisition, a minority investment, or an internal project that looks like a brand. The three below are the most common mistakes.

• iRobot (Roomba) — NOT owned. Amazon agreed to buy iRobot for about $1.7 billion, but the two companies terminated the deal in January 2024 after it became clear it could not clear European Union antitrust review. iRobot remains an independent, separately traded company.
• Rivian — NOT owned (it is an investment).Amazon is a large minority shareholder in the electric-vehicle maker Rivian and a major customer for its delivery vans, but Rivian is a separate public company, not an Amazon subsidiary. In 2026, Volkswagen overtook Amazon as Rivian’s largest single shareholder. A minority stake is not ownership of the business.
• Project Kuiper — NOT an acquisition.Kuiper is Amazon’s own satellite-internet initiative, built internally. It is part of Amazon, but it is not a company Amazon “bought,” so it does not belong on an acquisitions list.

The distinction between owning a company and investing in one matters at any scale. It is the same reason a founder’s single Delaware LLC is legally separate from the founder personally: ownership, control, and liability are defined by the entity structure, not by who is loosely associated with whom.

How does Amazon hold all these brands through Delaware?

A company the size of Amazon does not run every brand through one giant entity. Instead, the top-level company — Amazon.com, Inc., itself a Delaware corporation — sits above a tree of subsidiaries, many of them also registered in Delaware. Operating businesses are run through entities like Amazon Web Services, Inc. and Amazon.com Services LLC, and acquired brands are typically folded in as their own subsidiaries.

This holding-and-subsidiary structure does several things at once: it keeps the liabilities of one business from automatically flowing to another, it makes acquisitions cleaner to integrate, and it lets each unit keep its own contracts and brand. The legal glue holding it together is Delaware corporate law, which is predictable enough that lawyers across the country know how it will behave. That predictability is a large part of why Delaware became the default home for US corporate structures.

You do not need to be Amazon to use the same logic. A founder who later runs two unrelated brands might hold each in a separate Delaware LLC, or place both under a parent. Most founders, though, start with a single entity and only add complexity when there is a real reason to.

It also helps to understand why the subsidiary boundary is more than paperwork. When Amazon bought Ring, it did not pour Ring’s product liability, warranty obligations, and customer contracts directly into the parent company’s balance sheet. Those obligations stayed largely with the Ring entity. If a particular subsidiary faces a lawsuit or a contract dispute, the structure is designed so that the trouble is, in the first instance, the subsidiary’s — not automatically the whole group’s. This is the same limited-liability principle that makes an LLC attractive to a single founder: the entity, not the human behind it, carries the business’s contracts and risks, provided the owner respects the separation. Mixing personal and business money, or signing in your own name instead of the company’s, erodes that wall — at every scale, from a solo LLC up to a multinational’s subsidiary.

The flip side is that every entity has a cost: its own registered agent, its own franchise tax, its own bookkeeping, and its own filings. Amazon can absorb that overhead across thousands of people. A founder cannot, and should not pay for entities they do not yet need. That is why the right first step is almost always one well-run Delaware LLC, with additional structure added only when a concrete event — a co-founder, an investor, a second brand worth ring-fencing — actually arrives.

Why does Delaware appeal to giant multinationals and tiny founders alike?

Delaware’s appeal does not come from secrecy or low taxes in the way the headlines sometimes suggest. It comes from a deep, well-tested body of law and a court system built specifically for business disputes. The Delaware Court of Chancery hears corporate cases without juries, decided by judges who do nothing but business law. For a company holding dozens of subsidiaries and signing billion-dollar contracts, that predictability is worth real money.

For a solo founder the benefits scale down but do not disappear. You get a recognized US entity that banks and payment processors understand, a flexible LLC statute, and — for an LLC with no Delaware operations — a light compliance load. The state does not impose a Delaware income tax on an LLC that operates entirely outside Delaware, and the only recurring state charge for an LLC is the flat franchise tax discussed below. The same legal home that suits Amazon’s treasury team suits a one-person consulting business.

There is also a recognition effect that is easy to underrate. Because so many serious US companies are Delaware entities, counterparties — banks, payment processors, suppliers, future investors — read “Delaware LLC” as a normal, expected signal rather than something exotic. A non-resident founder who forms a Delaware entity is presenting the same kind of US legal identity that Amazon’s subsidiaries present, which tends to smooth the steps that otherwise cause friction for international founders: opening a US business bank account, getting approved for payments, and signing contracts with US partners. None of that is a guarantee — a bank or processor still makes its own decision — but the entity removes one common reason for hesitation.

What Delaware does notgive a small founder is secrecy or a way to dodge tax. An LLC’s US tax obligations follow from where and how it earns income and who owns it, not from the state of formation. A founder who forms in Delaware still owes whatever US federal tax their facts require, still files Form 5472 if they are a foreign-owned single-member LLC, and still answers to their home country’s tax rules. The right way to think about Delaware is as a stable, well-understood legal home — the same reason Amazon picked it — not as a loophole.

How would a founder build a structure like Amazon's, but smaller?

The honest answer is: you start far simpler than Amazon, and you only add entities when a real need appears. The first move is forming a single Delaware entity and getting it fully operational. Our how it works page walks through the full sequence, but the short version is:

• Form one Delaware entity. Most founders pick a Delaware LLC. If you plan to raise venture capital, a Delaware C-Corpmay fit better, the same way parts of Amazon’s group are corporations.
• Appoint a registered agent.Every Delaware entity must have one in the state. Amazon’s subsidiaries do; so must yours.
• Get an EIN. The federal tax ID comes from the IRS. See our EIN for a Delaware LLC guide for the non-resident process.
• Open banking and payments. With the EIN you can apply for US business banking and a Stripe account.
• Add structure only when justified. A holding company or a second LLC is a tool for a specific problem — a new brand, an investor, a venture you want to ring-fence — not a starting point.

The mistake to avoid is over-engineering. Amazon’s many-entity structure exists because Amazon has many distinct, large businesses. A founder with one business needs one entity, done properly.

It is worth saying plainly what “done properly” means, because the gap between a formed-but-dormant LLC and a working business is where most new founders stumble. Formation itself rarely fails — Delaware accepts correctly filed paperwork as a matter of routine, usually within about 48 hours. The friction shows up afterward: the EIN takes 2 to 4 weeks for an applicant without an SSN because the IRS processes those applications by fax or mail rather than instantly; the bank or payment processor wants the EIN finished and the details consistent across every document before it will approve an account; and the annual obligations — the franchise tax, and Form 5472 for foreign-owned single-member LLCs — need to be calendared so they are not missed. A founder who sequences these steps in the right order, and keeps the entity and personal affairs cleanly separated, ends up with the same kind of functioning US structure that Amazon’s subsidiaries rely on, just sized for one person.

LLC or C-Corp: which Delaware entity should a founder choose?

Amazon’s group contains both corporations and LLCs, because different jobs call for different entity types. A founder faces a smaller version of the same choice. The table below is a quick orientation, not legal or tax advice — confirm the right entity with an advisor before deciding.

For most readers of a page like this, a single Delaware LLC is the natural starting point. If your ambition genuinely is a venture-backed company, read our Delaware C-Corp guide first, because investors usually expect a C-Corp rather than an LLC.

What does the same Delaware entity cost a founder, year one and after?

Amazon’s subsidiaries each carry their own state fees and franchise taxes; for a single founder the numbers are small and transparent. Our service is a single flat fee of $397, and the Delaware state filing fee is already included — there is no separate state charge to add on. That one payment covers the Certificate of Formation, the EIN application, a registered agent for year one, your operating agreement, and US bank and Stripe application support.

From year two, a Delaware LLC owes a flat $300 franchise tax due June 1, covered in detail on our Delaware franchise tax page. Miss that June 1 deadline and Delaware adds a $200 penalty plus 1.5% interest per month, and the LLC loses good standing — which is why we track the date for you. One important point that trips people up: the “authorized shares” and “assumed par value” franchise-tax calculation methods you may read about apply only to corporations, never to LLCs. An LLC simply pays the flat $300. For the full breakdown, see our Delaware LLC cost guide.

What taxes, filings, and banking apply to a founder's Delaware LLC?

A Delaware LLC is, by default, a pass-through for US federal tax — the company itself does not pay income tax, and profit flows to the owner. Whether a non-resident owner owes US income tax depends on whether the activity is a US trade or business and on tax-treaty facts, which are specific to your situation. Our Delaware LLC taxes overview gives the general picture, but confirm your own position with a CPA.

The filing most non-resident owners must not miss is Form 5472. A foreign-owned (25% or more non-US) single-member Delaware LLC treated as a disregarded entity must file Form 5472 each year, attached to a pro-forma Form 1120, reporting transactions between the owner and the LLC. It is due April 15 and can be extended with Form 7004, and the penalty for failing to file is $25,000 under IRC 6038A. We track this; the detail lives in our Form 5472 for Delaware LLCs guide. If you sell online and receive card payments, note that the current 1099-K reporting threshold is more than $20,000 and more than 200 transactions, after the 2025 OBBBA legislation repealed the earlier lower-dollar rule.

On the banking side, Amazon’s subsidiaries bank through a corporate treasury; a solo founder banks through US fintechs that open business accounts online. Once your EIN is issued, providers such as Mercury, Relay, and Wise let non-residents apply entirely remotely. Approval is always the provider’s decision and is never guaranteed, so we help you present a clean application and apply to more than one if the first declines — because each reviews independently. Our Delaware LLC banking guide goes deeper.

For accepting customer payments, many founders add Stripeon top of banking. Stripe approval is likewise Stripe’s decision, not something anyone can promise on your behalf; a vague business description or mismatched documents are the usual reasons an application stalls. The full non-resident path, including the documents you need, is laid out in our Delaware LLC for non-residents guide. We serve founders from 40+ countries, and the process is the same remote sequence each time.

Is a Delaware LLC reported under BOI / FinCEN rules?

Beneficial ownership reporting under the Corporate Transparency Act has changed significantly and remains in flux. In March 2025, FinCEN issued an interim final rule that removed BOI reporting obligations for US domestic reporting companies. Under that rule, only certain “foreign reporting companies” registered to do business in the US must report, and US-formed domestic entities are generally exempt from providing beneficial-ownership information.

Because this area is still evolving and the rules may shift again, treat no summary as final and confirm the current FinCEN status at the source or with a professional before relying on it. We monitor these changes and flag them to the founders we work with, but the duty to file, if a filing is ever required, rests with the entity’s owner. None of this is legal advice; it is general information to orient you.

Many of these companies chose Delaware for the same reasons founders do today — the Court of Chancery, flexible LLC statutes, and strong privacy protections. Form your Delaware LLC for $397, all-inclusive, in 48 hours. Form your Delaware LLC → | Read the complete Delaware LLC guide →