Amazon claims No. 1 spot on Fortune Global 500 list

Amazon Amazon.com, Inc. ↘ 0.31% has claimed the No. 1 spot on the 2026 Fortune Global 500, becoming the largest company in the world by revenue and displacing Walmart ↗ 2.11% after more than a decade of dominance atop the ranking. The list, published Monday, shows an unprecedented consolidation of power among the world's biggest corporations.fortune+2

From Garage to Global Giant

Executive Chair Jeff Bezos told Fortune that Amazon's custom silicon business — which includes its Trainium AI training chips, Graviton general-purpose processors, and Nitro networking architecture — is poised to become the company's next major pillar alongside retail, Prime, and AWS. The chips division has reached an annualized revenue run rate exceeding $20 billion, doubling from the $10 billion reported at the end of 2025, according to CEO Andy Jassy's April shareholder letter.aibc+3

"There is such a high demand for our chips that it is quite feasible we will begin selling them to third parties in the future," Jassy said in April. Bloomberg reported in June that Amazon is in early talks to sell Trainium chips directly to external data center operators, a move that would pit it more directly against Nvidia ↘ 0.41%.digitalapplied+1

A $200 Billion AI Bet

Amazon expects to spend roughly $200 billion in capital expenditures in 2026, with the vast majority directed toward AI infrastructure including data centers, chips, and networking hardware. The figure represents a nearly 60 percent increase from the approximately $132 billion spent in 2025. Jassy first disclosed the target during Amazon's Q4 2025 earnings call in February, saying the company "will not be conservative in this AI cycle."linkedin+3

AWS's AI services have reached an annualized revenue run rate of more than $15 billion based on first-quarter performance, representing roughly 10 percent of the cloud unit's $142 billion total run rate.cnbc+2

A New Era for the Fortune Global 500

The 2026 Fortune Global 500 collectively generated $43.1 trillion in revenue, up 3 percent, and $3.4 trillion in profits, up 14 percent, while employing 70.2 million people worldwide. U.S. companies expanded their dominance with 141 entries and $15.5 trillion in aggregate revenue.fortune

Amazon generated nearly $716 billion in annual revenue in fiscal 2025, a 12 percent year-over-year increase that allowed it to leapfrog Walmart on both the domestic Fortune 500 — announced in June — and now the global list. Only four companies have ever held the No. 1 position in the Fortune 500's 72-year history: General Motors, ExxonMobil Exxon Mobil Corporation ↘ 1.38%, Walmart, and now Amazon.geekwire+1