Amazon Dethrones Walmart as World's Biggest Company by Sales (bloomberg.com)
(Thursday February 19, 2026 @11:45AM (msmash)
from the closer-look dept.)
- Reference: 0180826954
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/26/02/19/158237/amazon-dethrones-walmart-as-worlds-biggest-company-by-sales
- Source link: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-19/amazon-dethrones-walmart-as-world-s-biggest-company-by-sales
An anonymous reader shares a report:
> Amazon has [1]officially dethroned Walmart as the biggest global company by revenue, a milestone attesting to the massive scale the e-commerce and cloud-computing giant has achieved since its humble beginnings in 1994 as an online bookseller in Jeff Bezos' Seattle-area garage.
>
> Walmart, which had been the largest company by revenue for more than a decade, on Thursday reported sales of $713.2 billion for the 12 months ending Jan. 31. Amazon, which operates on a fiscal year ending in December, earlier this month reported 2025 sales of $717 billion.
>
> Bezos carefully studied Walmart founder Sam Walton, embracing many of his business strategies while building his company. Over the past decade, Amazon's revenue has increased at almost 10 times the pace of Walmart's, fueled by a shift in consumer spending from stores to websites and its rapidly growing cloud-computing business, Amazon Web Services.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-19/amazon-dethrones-walmart-as-world-s-biggest-company-by-sales
> Amazon has [1]officially dethroned Walmart as the biggest global company by revenue, a milestone attesting to the massive scale the e-commerce and cloud-computing giant has achieved since its humble beginnings in 1994 as an online bookseller in Jeff Bezos' Seattle-area garage.
>
> Walmart, which had been the largest company by revenue for more than a decade, on Thursday reported sales of $713.2 billion for the 12 months ending Jan. 31. Amazon, which operates on a fiscal year ending in December, earlier this month reported 2025 sales of $717 billion.
>
> Bezos carefully studied Walmart founder Sam Walton, embracing many of his business strategies while building his company. Over the past decade, Amazon's revenue has increased at almost 10 times the pace of Walmart's, fueled by a shift in consumer spending from stores to websites and its rapidly growing cloud-computing business, Amazon Web Services.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-19/amazon-dethrones-walmart-as-world-s-biggest-company-by-sales
only just happened? (Score:2)
by haruchai ( 17472 )
i thought it happened several years ago at the peak of COVID. prior to pandemic I'd made less than $500 of purchases from Amazon.
since early 2021, it's close to $10k
Re: only just happened? (Score:2)
by liqu1d ( 4349325 )
Why out of interest. Is it ease of use? Are you buying more that you used to?
The battle to be Buy'n'Large (Score:2)
by xack ( 5304745 )
Now who gets to design Wall-E? With all the Microplastics and illegal waste dumps from excessive consumption we better make them use their AIs to clean it all up.
What prevents these companies from succeeding? (Score:3)
Wal-Mart is not the first retail giant dethroned by Amazon despite having a web presence, that was Sears. Ironically, they had just defeated Montgomery Ward in the catalog sales business, just in time for that to become irrelevant.
Sears' website was garbage, but their prices were also garbage. The former thing was not entirely unexpected, but the latter was weird. I tend to suppose that actually points to deliberate failure to execute in order to further the goal of liquidating the company.
Wal-Mart is more puzzling to me. They have natural advantages over Amazon that they don't seem to be able to actually benefit from, like their existing retail locations. And they also already had their own trucking fleet before Amazon even came into existence at all. I would have thought they could have parlayed this into superior performance to Amazon, but their delivery periods are tragic.
What prevents Wal-Mart from dominating here? They were basically Amazon before Amazon. Now they're Temu Amazon.
Re: What prevents these companies from succeeding? (Score:2)
Amazon is now temu Amazon. It's 99% temu stuff with a markup. As for not being able to compete Walmart appears to pay their tax bills. Amazon "doesn't earn anything in the country" so appear to pay considerably less tax. They're also massively propped up by their cloud, advertising, video streaming, prime subscriptions that they can afford to out price Walmart and still make a considerable profit via quantity hence the outselling thing presumably. Sure there's a lot more to it that my tiny brain doesn't un
Re: (Score:2)
> Wal-Mart is not the first retail giant dethroned by Amazon despite having a web presence, that was Sears. Ironically, they had just defeated Montgomery Ward in the catalog sales business, just in time for that to become irrelevant.
> Sears' website was garbage, but their prices were also garbage. The former thing was not entirely unexpected, but the latter was weird. I tend to suppose that actually points to deliberate failure to execute in order to further the goal of liquidating the company.
> Wal-Mart is more puzzling to me. They have natural advantages over Amazon that they don't seem to be able to actually benefit from, like their existing retail locations. And they also already had their own trucking fleet before Amazon even came into existence at all. I would have thought they could have parlayed this into superior performance to Amazon, but their delivery periods are tragic.
> What prevents Wal-Mart from dominating here? They were basically Amazon before Amazon. Now they're Temu Amazon.
You can buy shit on Amazon that you absolutely cannot buy on or at a Walmart. (You could probably buy actual shit on Amazon. No bullshit. Actual shit.)
If you want to cater to 60% of the planet, you're Walmart.
If you want to cater to 90% of the planet, you're Amazon.
Business lesson? Don't be a fucking prude. You'll sell more shit. Don't worry. It'll only cost you your soul in the end when you put Soylent Green on the shelf.
Re: (Score:2)
Amazon is selling all sorts of crazy low quality stuff from knock-off brands contributing a lot of volume. As bad as wal-mart is, even they wouldn't carry a lot of that junk on shelves.
The other thing that may play a factor is that Wal Mart is *notoriously* dickish to suppliers. Refusing to accept certain things the suppliers want to sell, demanding packages that don't make sense even as the sales prove the supplier right, wal mart keeps pushing.