The company will pay One Medical shareholders $18 per share, a more than 75 per cent premium on its closing price on Wednesday. The San Francisco company’s stock price closed up 69 percent on Thursday.

The acquisition is the latest attempt by Amazon to become a leading player in the healthcare industry, from becoming an online pharmacy to providing telehealth services. One Medical offers a subscription-based model where users can pay a monthly fee to have access to doctors.

"We believe healthcare is high on the list of experiences that require innovation," said Neil Lindsay, senior vice president of Amazon Health Services.

One Medical went public in early 2020, and its share price jumped during the coronavirus epidemic, but company has failed to maintain the pace, with shares presently trading below their IPO price. Its main owners are hedge fund Tiger Global and private equity firm Carlyle.

The debt-financed transaction is expected to serve as a litmus test for US antitrust officials under the Biden administration, who have been openly skeptical of Big Tech's monopolistic position.

Lina Khan, chairperson of the Federal Trade Commission, and Jonathan Kanter, head of antitrust at the US Department of Justice, have both stated that it is critical to limit the market dominance wielded by giant digital corporations like Amazon and Google.

In 2020, Amazon created an online pharmacy that provided prescription medications at a reduced cost. It had paid almost $1 billion for PillPack, a mail-order pharmacy that prepares and mails pills.

Stocks of publicly traded pharmacies had decreased dramatically as a result of Amazon's entry into the industry at the time of the PillPack purchase.

In this area, the corporation is also utilizing its Amazon Web Capabilities cloud and AI services so that data may be utilized to improve health.

Amazon faces competition from Alphabet, which purchased fitness monitoring startup Fitbit last year, and DeepMind, a London-based AI company that acquired Google Health in 2014.