For decades, Walmart held the undisputed crown as America’s biggest company by revenue. That era is now over. Amazon has officially overtaken the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retail giant, posting $638 billion in trailing twelve-month revenue compared to Walmart’s $674 billion fiscal year figure — but when measured on a comparable calendar-year basis, Amazon’s momentum has carried it past its longtime rival. The shift marks a historic changing of the guard in American commerce, one driven by cloud computing, advertising, and an insatiable appetite for expansion that shows no signs of slowing.
According to TechRadar, Amazon’s first-quarter 2025 revenue came in at $155.7 billion, a 9% year-over-year increase that pushed the company’s trailing twelve-month revenue past the $600 billion mark. The report notes that Amazon’s revenue growth is accelerating across multiple business lines simultaneously, a feat that few companies of its size have managed. Walmart, by contrast, reported fiscal year 2025 revenue of approximately $674 billion, but its growth rate has been slower, and Amazon’s trajectory suggests the gap will only continue to narrow — and has likely already been eclipsed when comparing identical time periods.
A Throne Built on More Than Cardboard Boxes
What makes Amazon’s ascent particularly striking is that it is not simply a story about selling more products online. While the company’s e-commerce operations remain enormous, the fastest-growing segments of Amazon’s business are Amazon Web Services (AWS), its cloud computing division, and its rapidly expanding advertising business. AWS alone generated $29.3 billion in revenue in Q1 2025, growing at roughly 17% year-over-year. The advertising segment, meanwhile, has become a multi-billion-dollar juggernaut, with brands paying handsomely for placement across Amazon’s sprawling digital properties.
Amazon’s operating income also tells a compelling story. The company reported $18.4 billion in operating income for Q1 2025, a figure that dwarfs Walmart’s profitability on a per-quarter basis. This is not merely a company that is big — it is a company that is becoming significantly more profitable as it grows, a combination that has Wall Street analysts raising their price targets and institutional investors increasing their positions. CEO Andy Jassy has repeatedly emphasized the company’s focus on cost discipline and operational efficiency, and the numbers suggest those efforts are bearing fruit.
The Cloud Advantage Walmart Cannot Easily Replicate
Walmart has made significant investments in technology and e-commerce over the past several years, including its Walmart+ subscription service and expanded online grocery delivery. But the company lacks a direct equivalent to AWS, which functions as a high-margin growth engine that funds Amazon’s lower-margin retail operations. This structural advantage gives Amazon a diversification that Walmart has struggled to match. While Walmart has explored advertising through Walmart Connect, its scale remains a fraction of Amazon’s ad business.
The importance of AWS cannot be overstated. As enterprises around the world increase their spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure, cloud storage, and data analytics, AWS sits at the center of that spending wave. Amazon has invested heavily in custom AI chips and expanded its data center footprint globally, positioning AWS to capture an outsized share of what analysts expect to be a trillion-dollar market over the coming decade. Walmart, for all its strengths in physical retail and supply chain management, simply does not compete in this arena.
Revenue Is Only Part of the Story — Market Capitalization Tells Another
Amazon’s market capitalization, which hovers around $2 trillion as of mid-2025, is roughly four times that of Walmart’s. This disparity reflects investor confidence not just in Amazon’s current earnings power, but in its future growth potential. The market is essentially saying that Amazon’s mix of businesses — retail, cloud, advertising, streaming, logistics, and increasingly healthcare and satellite internet through Project Kuiper — represents a more valuable long-term franchise than Walmart’s retail-centric model.
As reported by TechRadar, Amazon’s rise to the top of the revenue rankings was not a sudden event but rather the culmination of years of relentless investment and expansion. The company has poured billions into its logistics network, building out a delivery infrastructure that now rivals FedEx and UPS in scale. It has expanded its Prime membership program to include streaming video, music, gaming, and pharmacy benefits, creating a bundle of services that keeps customers spending within Amazon’s orbit.
Walmart’s Response: Steady but Insufficient to Close the Gap
Walmart is far from a company in decline. Under CEO Doug McMillon, the retailer has modernized its operations, expanded its e-commerce capabilities, and grown its international presence, particularly in markets like India through its Flipkart subsidiary. Walmart’s grocery business remains a formidable competitive advantage, and the company’s network of more than 4,700 U.S. stores gives it a physical presence that Amazon is only beginning to build through its Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh locations.
Yet the structural challenge for Walmart is clear. Its core business — selling physical goods through stores and online — operates on thin margins, typically in the 2% to 4% range. Amazon’s blended margins, boosted by AWS and advertising, are significantly higher and trending upward. This means that even if Walmart matches Amazon’s revenue growth rate — which it currently does not — it would still fall further behind in profitability and, by extension, in its ability to reinvest in future growth.
The AI Spending Boom Adds Fuel to Amazon’s Fire
The current surge in enterprise AI spending is providing a powerful tailwind for Amazon. Companies across every industry are racing to build AI capabilities, and most of them are doing so on cloud platforms like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Amazon has responded by investing tens of billions of dollars in AI infrastructure, including new data centers and partnerships with AI startups. Jassy has described AI as a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity for AWS, and the financial results are beginning to reflect that conviction.
Amazon’s AI ambitions extend beyond cloud computing. The company is integrating AI into its retail operations through improved product recommendations, automated warehouses, and conversational shopping assistants powered by its large language models. These investments are designed to make Amazon’s retail operations more efficient while simultaneously generating new revenue streams, creating a virtuous cycle that competitors will find difficult to disrupt.
What This Means for the Broader Economy and Corporate America
Amazon’s displacement of Walmart at the top of the revenue rankings is more than a corporate milestone — it is a signal about the direction of the American economy. The fact that a company born on the internet, one that did not exist before 1994, has overtaken a retailer founded in 1962 speaks to the profound structural shifts that have reshaped commerce, technology, and consumer behavior over the past three decades.
For investors, the implications are significant. Amazon’s continued growth suggests that the convergence of retail, cloud computing, advertising, and AI will be the dominant business model of the coming decade. For competitors, including not just Walmart but also Microsoft, Google, and traditional retailers, Amazon’s ascent raises the competitive stakes across multiple industries simultaneously. And for consumers, the rise of Amazon means continued downward pressure on prices, faster delivery times, and an ever-expanding array of services available through a single subscription.
The Road Ahead: Can Anyone Catch Amazon?
The question facing corporate America is no longer whether Amazon can overtake Walmart — that has already happened. The question is whether any company can slow Amazon’s momentum. Microsoft, with its Azure cloud platform and deep integration with OpenAI, represents perhaps the most credible competitive threat in cloud computing. Walmart, with its unmatched physical retail footprint, remains a formidable competitor in grocery and everyday essentials. But no single company competes with Amazon across all of its business lines simultaneously, and that breadth is what makes Amazon’s position so formidable.
Andy Jassy and his leadership team have made clear that they view the current moment as the early innings of a much larger opportunity. With AI spending accelerating, international markets still largely untapped, and new ventures like Project Kuiper and Amazon Pharmacy in their early stages, the company’s growth story appears far from over. For Walmart and the rest of corporate America, the message is unmistakable: the new king of American business is not just sitting on the throne — it is building an empire.