Amazon is trailing closely behind Apple to become the second publicly traded company to be worth $1 trillion.

The company's shares hit an all-time high Monday by rising two per cent.

Right now the online retail giant, led by CEO Jeff Bezos, is estimated to be worth about $940billion and their stocks need to rise just seven per cent to reach a trillion dollar market valuation.

Apple and Amazon were neck and neck in the race to becoming the first trillion dollar company until earlier this month when the IPhone maker hit 13 digits.

Amazon's shares hit an all-time high Monday by rising two per cent

Jeff Bezos' company is currently worth about $940billion and is just seven per cent away from reaching a trillion dollar market valuation

Google and Microsoft are also in the running to becoming trillionaries, currently worth $875billion and $840billion.

Amazon, which started in 1995 as an online bookstore, has expanded beyond online retail to boost its profits.

AMAZON'S PRIME DAY RECORDS A July event that the company created to drum up business during the summer shopping lulls, Prime Day, has become a bonafide event to rival Black Friday. Popular brands now agree to put their inventory on sale for members of Amazon's loyalty club Prime, while rival retailers scramble to drive traffic back to their websites. This year, Amazon said the July event saw Prime members purchase more than 100 million products. The company said it now expects third-quarter sales of between $54 billion and $57.5 billion, up from $43.7 billion a year earlier. Even more crucially, more people joined Prime on July 16 than on any previous day in the company's history, Amazon said. Advertisement

One area that it has found big success in is consumer tech hardware, a topic that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos touched on in a statement about the results.

Amazon has integrated its AI-infused digital assistant, Alexa, into a range of voice-activated speakers, as well as numerous smart home devices.

'We want customers to be able to use Alexa wherever they are,' Mr Bezos said.

'There are now tens of thousands of developers across more than 150 countries building new devices using the Alexa Voice Service, and the number of Alexa-enabled devices has more than tripled in the past year,' he added.

A big contributor to the quarter and the last few quarters obviously has been strong growth in our highest profitability businesses and also advertising,' Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky said on a call with analysts.

'We’ve seen a greater-than-expected efficiency in a lot of our spend in things like warehouses, data centers, marketing.'

Amazon reported net income of $2.53 billion, or $5.07 per share, in the three months ending June 3, blowing past the $2.48 per share Wall Street analysts expected, according to FactSet.

Revenue soared 39 percent to $52.89 billion in the second quarter, but was below the $53.37 billion analysts expected.

Amazon attributed part of its recent success to Prime Day, a 36-hour shopping event that kicked off on July 16 and has gradually become a bonafide event to rival Black Friday.

People also continue to renew their Prime subscriptions despite the recent price hike that was announced.

The firm said it would raise the price of Prime memberships in the US by $20, but that doesn't seem to have deterred consumers.

For UK customers, Amazon Prime costs £79 a year or £7.99 per month.