Amazon has overtaken Walmart to become the world’s largest company by annual revenue, underscoring how the rise of e-commerce and cloud computing is reshaping the global corporate hierarchy.
The milestone reflects not just Amazon’s dominance in online retail, but the explosive growth of its cloud arm, Amazon Web Services (AWS), which has turned data centres into critical infrastructure in the artificial intelligence era.
Amazon.com Inc. reported 2025 sales of $717 billion for its fiscal year ended December.
Walmart Inc., whose fiscal year ended January 31, posted revenue of $713.2 billion for the 12 months.
Walmart had held the top position by revenue for more than a decade.
Amazon’s journey from an online bookstore founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in a Seattle-area garage to the world’s largest company by sales marks a dramatic shift in consumer behaviour and corporate scale.
While Amazon and Walmart compete directly in retail, the decisive edge came from Amazon’s cloud computing division.
Without AWS, Amazon’s 2025 revenue would have been $588 billion
Over the past decade, Amazon’s revenue has grown nearly 10 times faster than Walmart’s
Growth has been fuelled by online spending and demand for cloud infrastructure
AWS has emerged as a backbone for artificial intelligence and enterprise computing — a segment where Walmart has no presence.
“This is a hollow victory,” said Kirthi Kalyanam, executive director of the Retail Management Institute at Santa Clara University, arguing that Amazon did not surpass Walmart purely on retail strength but through diversification.
Both companies remain fierce competitors for US consumer spending.
Amazon is the largest online retailer globally
Its website and apps attract around 2.7 billion visits per month
Walmart operates more than 10,000 stores and shopping clubs worldwide
Interestingly, Walmart has made stronger progress in building its e-commerce business than Amazon has in scaling physical retail, despite Amazon’s 2017 acquisition of Whole Foods Market.
Being the largest company by revenue signals scale and reach but does not necessarily translate into market value.
Nvidia Corp. is currently the world’s most valuable company, with a market capitalisation of about $4.5 trillion — more than double Amazon’s and over four times Walmart’s valuation.
Earlier revenue leaders included Exxon Mobil Corp. and General Motors Co., positions that often bring greater political scrutiny and regulatory attention.
Bezos, who once surpassed Bill Gates as the world’s richest person, currently ranks fourth globally with an estimated net worth of $228 billion, largely tied to his Amazon shareholding.
Amazon’s rise highlights a broader structural shift: in the AI-driven economy, control over digital infrastructure may matter as much — if not more — than dominance in traditional retail.
