Good morning. There is a new top dog in Corporate America. Walmart, long the largest U.S. company by revenue and No. 1 on the Fortune 500, was eclipsed for the first time by Amazon.com. Based on Q4 earnings, Amazon recorded $716.9 billion in revenue for 2025 and Walmart took in a notch less than that with $713.2 billion, putting Amazon on top. (You can read my full analysis of the reshuffle, part of our new digital issue, here.)
Walmart has stood atop the Fortune 500 list for 13 years and for 21 of the last 24 years. But barring any surprises, Amazon will lead the next list in June to become only the fourth No. 1 ever, along with Exxon, General Motors and Walmart.
While it is tempting to see in this change a classic narrative of an older, less nimble contender being outmaneuvered by an upstart, no one should see Walmart as a company in secular decline. This is a far cry from when Walmart left competitors Sears, Kmart and J.C. Penney in the rear-view mirror a generation ago.
Amazon’s ascent posed an existential threat to Walmart, but it ultimately put Walmart back on the path of growth and relevance. Walmart initially was slow to realize how much e-commerce was going to change shopping and consumers’ discernment of price and convenience, the very things that had allowed it to supplant Sears et al before. But under former CEO Doug McMillon, and new CEO John Furner, Walmart began a reinvention in 2014 not only of its way of doing business but of its culture too. That has ultimately made Walmart a place where failure (within reason) is tolerated as long it leads to the innovation needed to compete with Amazon’s relentlessness. Walmart’s online business grew 27% last quarter, and it handily beats Amazon in the crucial area of grocery delivery.
