What's going on?

Amazon is opening a second headquarters � and inviting cities in North America to vie for its investment (tweet this). It�s the latest sign of Amazon�s huge, and growing, influence�

What does this mean?

Amazon is planning to spend $5 billion on the construction and operation of this new headquarters, which will have 50,000 employees. The company is asking local and state government leaders to suggest sites for the project, dubbed �HQ2�. HQ2 would almost certainly bring huge economic benefits for the city that it chooses to reside in. For its existing headquarters in Seattle for example, Amazon estimates that from 2010 to 2016, for each $1 that Amazon invested, the city generated $1.40 of business!

Why should I care?

For the stock: Amazon is in the middle of an expansion on many fronts.
Amazon is making big strides to grow, despite already being the 4th largest public company in the world. This includes expanding geographically (they recently also built a new office in London), expanding their offerings (they recently made their largest acquisition to date with Whole Foods) and bolstering their workforce (they recently went on a hiring spree). However, growth carries risks: Amazon must justify its current spending by making more money in the future, lest shareholders be disappointed (but so far they appear to be pretty optimistic!).

The bigger picture: As Amazon gets more powerful, regulators are more likely to take action to limit its power.
Amazon has a knack for becoming the market leader in industries it targets � like its digital marketplace in retail, Amazon Web Services in cloud computing and, arguably, Alexa in AI-powered assistants. But companies that get too large tend to attract regulatory scrutiny, such as concerns about them using their size and power to engage in anti-competitive behavior and unfairly hold back smaller competitors (Google and Microsoft both had to deal with this) � and these types of concerns could limit Amazon�s ambitious plans for growth.