Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN.US) surpasses Walmart Inc. (WMT.US) to top the global revenue list.

Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN.US) has officially surpassed Walmart Inc. (WMT.US) to become the highest revenue-generating company in the world. This milestone achievement highlights the immense growth that this e-commerce and cloud computing giant has experienced since its founding in 1994 - at that time, it was just a online bookstore founded by Jeff Bezos in a garage in the Seattle area. Walmart Inc., which has held the top spot in global revenue for over a decade, announced on Thursday that its sales for the 12 months ending January 31 amounted to $713.2 billion. Amazon.com, Inc., whose fiscal year ends in December, earlier this month announced sales of up to $717 billion for 2025. However, in terms of revenue structure, Amazon.com, Inc.'s rise to the top is more due to its dominant position in the cloud computing field - an area that Walmart Inc. has not ventured into. Excluding revenue from AWS, Amazon.com, Inc.'s revenue for 2025 would be $588 billion. Therefore, its rise to the top largely depends on the importance of data centers as key infrastructure in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Kirthi Kalyanam, executive director of the Retail Management Institute at Santa Clara University in the United States, commented: "This is a victory in name only. Amazon.com, Inc. did not beat Walmart Inc. in the retail race, it just surpassed them in revenue by leveraging new businesses Walmart Inc. has not entered." Becoming the highest revenue-generating company in the world mainly symbolizes a large scale and broad consumer reach, but this is not the only indicator that investors value. Prior to Walmart Inc., Exxon Mobil Corporation (XOM.US) and General Motors Company (GM.US) have also held this honor, but this title often comes with more stringent regulatory scrutiny and higher consumer expectations. Currently, the company with the highest global market value is NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA.US), which has a market value of $4.5 trillion, more than double that of Amazon.com, Inc., and over four times that of Walmart Inc.