An IMGlobalWealth.news Report
Who rules the corporate world depends on how corporate power is measured. By revenue, however, the answer has changed. Amazon has overtaken Walmart to become the world’s largest company by sales, ending Walmart’s long dominance of the Fortune Global 500 and reshaping the upper reaches of global corporate power.
The 2026 Fortune Global 500, which ranks companies according to revenues from their latest fiscal years, places Amazon first with $716.9 billion, narrowly ahead of Walmart at $713.2 billion. China’s State Grid ranks third on $555.4 billion, followed by UnitedHealth Group at $447.6 billion and Saudi Aramco at $445.5 billion.
Amazon’s own results confirm the scale of its rise. The company reported 2025 net sales of $716.9 billion, up 12% from $638 billion a year earlier. Walmart, meanwhile, reported fiscal-2026 revenue of $713.16 billion, an increase of 4.7%.
The contrast with 2020 is striking. In that year’s Fortune Global 500, Walmart was comfortably first with around $524 billion in revenue, followed by Sinopec and State Grid. Amazon ranked ninth with approximately $281 billion.
Since then, Amazon’s annual revenue has risen by roughly 156%, compared with around 36% for Walmart.
The composition of the global corporate elite has also shifted. The 2020 top ten was dominated by energy and industrial groups including Sinopec, China National Petroleum, Shell, Saudi Aramco and BP. By 2026, the picture had changed considerably.
Three US healthcare companies, UnitedHealth Group, McKesson and CVS Health, now sit inside the top ten, alongside technology groups Apple and Alphabet. UnitedHealth reported full-year 2025 revenue of $447.6 billion, while CVS recorded $402.1 billion.
The ten largest companies by revenue in 2026 are:
1. Amazon – $716.9bn
2. Walmart – $713.2bn
3. State Grid – $555.4bn
4. UnitedHealth Group – $447.6bn
5. Saudi Aramco – $445.5bn
6. Apple – $416.2bn
7. McKesson – $403.4bn
8. Alphabet – $402.8bn
9. CVS Health – $402.1bn
10. China National Petroleum – $401.9bn
The shift is broader than any single company. Fortune says the Global 500 generated a combined $43.1 trillion in revenue in 2025, up 3.2% year on year, while profits reached a record $3.39 trillion.
There is one statistical caveat: Fortune’s rankings compare companies with different fiscal year-ends, so they are not perfect calendar-year comparisons. Even so, the direction is clear. The commanding heights of global business are increasingly being shaped by e-commerce, technology and healthcare, rather than principally by oil, heavy industry and traditional retail.
