American retail giants: Walmart loses crown to Amazon

For the first time in more than a decade, retail giant Walmart is no longer the largest company in America by revenue. Amazon takes first place after registering strong growth, marking a major shift in the ranking of the largest companies in the US, according to visualcapitalist.com.

The cited source, in partnership with Terzo, compiled the ranking of the largest companies in the US - by revenue, from 2024 to 2026.

• Amazon - revenue of $ 717 billion in the fiscal year 2025

Amazon generated revenue of $ 717 billion in the fiscal year 2025, so that the online commerce giant managed to occupy the first place in the 2026 ranking. While online stores remained the company's largest business segment, the fastest growth came from advertising services and Amazon Web Services (AWS), its cloud computing and AI infrastructure division.

Right behind Amazon is Walmart, with revenue of $713 billion. While the retailer is best known for its vast network of stores, e-commerce is playing an increasingly important role in its business. From fiscal year 2024 to 2026, its online sales grew from 16% to 21% of total revenue, highlighting Walmart's continued push into digital commerce.

Up to 10th place, the rankings look like this: UnitedHealth ($448 billion), Apple ($416 billion), McKesson ($403 billion), Alphabet ($403 billion), CVS Health ($402 billion), Berkshire Hathaway ($371 billion), Exxon Mobil ($332 billion), Cencora ($321 billion).

• Other ranking changes

The biggest move in the 2026 rankings is made by McKesson (a healthcare company), which has climbed four spots in the past year. Along with Cencora, ranked 10th, the company plays a key role in the U.S. drug supply chain, distributing such products nationwide. Growing demand for specialty treatments and GLP-1 weight loss drugs helped fuel McKesson's growth.

Meanwhile, oil major Exxon Mobil continued its decline, falling to ninth place. Since 1955, the company has been the largest company in America by revenue 13 times, last holding the title in 2012.

Berkshire Hathaway and CVS Health both fell two places in the 2026 ranking of the largest U.S. companies. Berkshire's revenue remained essentially flat. Lower fuel-related sales from its Pilot travel business weighed on growth in other sectors. While CVS Health posted a revenue boost, it was outpaced by faster-growing companies like McKesson and Alphabet.

Behind the revenues of America's largest companies are thousands of supplier agreements, vendor contracts, and renewal obligations. As companies become more complex, visibility into this information can drive cost savings and improve decision-making.

• Amazon expands into AI in Spain

Amazon said in March it would invest another 18 billion euros ($21 billion) in Spain to expand its network of data centers and boost AI (artificial intelligence) innovations, bringing the total investment in the Iberian state to 33.7 billion euros, Reuters reported, according to Agerpres.

The Amazon investment was announced at the 2026 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

David Zapolsky, Amazon's general counsel and head of global affairs, said the investment could support nearly 30,000 jobs by 2035.

"With this investment, we are making Spain the AI epicenter of our operations in Europe," the Amazon official said.

AWS, a division of Amazon and the world's largest cloud services provider, last year announced a 15.7 billion euro investment in the Aragon region of northern Spain, which is expected to support the creation of an average of 17,500 jobs per year at local companies by 2033.

In February, Pamela MacDougall, director of Energy Markets and Regulation at Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), warned that the time it takes to get a grid connection has become one of the most important factors in making decisions about investments in the company's data centers.

Connecting to the transmission grid in Europe can take up to seven years, compared to two years for a data center, the official explained. In the United States, connection takes an average of 1-3 years, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated, although it can sometimes stretch to seven years.

"And we are increasingly experiencing grid delays in Europe,” Pamela MacDougall told Reuters in an interview.

Energy-intensive industries have called on the European Union to invest more in grids, warning that rapid connection to stable and secure power grids is a key criterion for investing in new industrial sites in Europe.

MacDougall said that "in many countries in Europe” Amazon wanted to build infrastructure, but they either didn't have grid connections or grid congestion made the project unfeasible. "There is a gap. We want to scale up and grow in two years,” MacDougall said, adding that the delays "are hurting our growth aspirations.”

Amazon is building data centers in Europe as it expands its AWS business. The company did not specify how many data centers it is building on the continent, but it has infrastructure in more than 20 European countries and is expanding its investments in countries such as France, Germany and Spain.