Amazon is now the world’s biggest company, but its founder once doubted the business would survive.
“Amazon is not too big to fail,” then-CEO Jeff Bezos reportedly told employees in a 2018 all-hands meeting. “In fact, I predict one day Amazon will fail. Amazon will go bankrupt. If you look at large companies, their lifespans tend to be 30-plus years, not a hundred-plus years.”
Bezos’s warning wasn’t a prediction of imminent collapse, but instead an opportunity to distill his business philosophy. To stave off the inevitable demise “for as long as possible,” Bezos argued an obsessive focus on customer satisfaction was key. At the time, Amazon had just crossed a $1 trillion market cap for the first time, and faced fierce competition from Walmart, Target, and eBay.
Eight years later, Amazon now sits atop the Fortune Global 500 for the first time, overtaking Walmart to become the world’s largest company by revenue. The milestone follows another historic first: Just last month, Amazon snapped Walmart’s 13-year streak at No. 1 on the Fortune 500, ranking the largest companies in the U.S.
The e-commerce giant had seen a steady rise in revenue over the years, but had yet to officially snap its competitor’s streak. But in February, Amazon reported $716.9 billion in revenue for 2025, beating Walmart by more than $3 billion. Its market capitalization has surged to roughly $2.5 trillion, more than doubling since Bezos issued his warning. He recently admitted the new title wasn’t “a complete surprise.”
