Amazon Edges out Walmart as the World’s Top Seller

With input from CNN, Fortune, Bloomberg, the Financial Times, and NPR.

If you thought Walmart had the crown forever, think again. The old king’s been nudged off the throne — not by a rival store down the street but by a company that keeps reinventing what “retail” even means. Last year the e-commerce giant pulled in roughly $717 billion in sales. The longtime leader posted about $713 billion. Close fight. Different makeup.

The headline is simple: one company’s retail business still matters — a lot — but cloud computing, advertising and subscriptions pushed the other over the finish line. The result is the first time in more than a decade that the grocery-and-garage-aisles champion has ceded the top spot.

A little context: the online-born behemoth started as a bookstore back in the ’90s and kept piling on businesses nobody expected. Its cloud arm alone raked in nearly $129 billion — an incredible engine that fuels businesses around the world and pads the company’s bottom line. That cloud arm is the cash cow that lets the company spend wildly on logistics, AI and new experiments without watching profits evaporate.

That cash-cow story isn’t abstract. It’s right there in the numbers. The bulk of last year’s sales still came from the company’s stores, marketplaces and third-party sellers — about $464 billion — but the rest came from ads, subscriptions and cloud services. Advertising and Prime-type revenues together crossed the $100 billion mark, giving management the flexibility to treat retail as part of a much bigger system.

Who’s steering the ship? The outfit’s founder still looms large in the lore. Jeff Bezos set the long-term playbook: customer obsession, reinvest everything, and keep moving. Today, the engine that Bezos lit has a new conductor on the stage of day-to-day operations. Andy Jassy, who built the cloud business from the ground up, now spends big to chase AI, chips, data centers and logistics — bets the company expects will pay off over years, not quarters.

On the other side, the long-time leader isn’t exactly crumpling. The retail giant’s stores still drive most of its cash. Under steady leadership, the company has reshaped itself into a hybrid: part neighborhood supermarket, part e-commerce hub, part ad platform. The chain has bulked up its same-day delivery, leaned into digital tools and even changed how investors perceive it — moving its stock to a tech-focused exchange and hitting a $1 trillion market value milestone. That’s not the behavior of a company ready to check out.

The secret to the newcomer’s ascent isn’t magic. It’s diversification. The cloud division — formally known as Amazon Web Services (AWS) — is the financial engine that lets management underwrite risky moves. AWS is also a profit dynamo: it generates a disproportionate share of operating income even though it’s a fraction of overall sales. That means the company can fund massive infrastructure projects, edge into AI, and offer ultra-fast delivery while competitors scramble to match pace.

There’s also brand power and habit. The company perfected Prime — a loyalty loop that makes customers buy more, stay longer, and forgive missteps. That kind of stickiness is hard to replicate. Even so, the retailer has leaned into its own digital tools — an AI shopping assistant, rapid delivery options, and partnerships that pull in higher-income shoppers — and gained market share in key categories.

This isn’t a one-sided story of winner and loser. The retail giant’s U.S. sales are firing and its e-commerce business kept growing strongly last quarter. New leadership at the company is promising to double down on technology and keep the battle live. John Furner, who recently took over the top role, argues the firm is embracing change and leading it. That’s not idle talk: the chain’s physical footprint gives it distribution advantages that are proving valuable for quick deliveries and grocery dominance.

Still, the twist here is structural. The newly crowned leader mixes retail reach with a fast-growing tech stack. That’s a combo that changes how you measure size. Total sales matter — they always do — but the makeup of those sales tells you which company can invest in the future without blowing up the balance sheet.

Expect the rivalry to get more interesting. The two companies will keep stealing ideas from one another: one will expand its physical presence and improve pickup and grocery; the other will bulk up AI, cloud capacity and subscription hooks. Both will pour money into logistics and automation, and both will hunt for higher-margin revenue beyond plain old boxes and barcodes.

There’s also risk. Massive spending on data centers and AI infrastructure — the kind of multi-year, tens-of-billions-of-dollars bets the e-commerce giant has promised — could spook investors if returns lag. Likewise, the retailer’s heavy reliance on in-store traffic leaves it sensitive to shifts in consumer behavior. Both companies have to juggle investment, margins, and growth.

What to watch next: will cloud keep growing fast enough to widen the gap? Can the retailer translate its store network into a moat against faster digital competition? And which company will turn AI and logistics into real profit engines rather than mere spending lines?

For now, the headline is clear and simple: the crown changed hands. That tells you more about how business has evolved than about who’s better at running a supermarket. The world’s biggest company by sales is now the one that sells the tech that sells the stuff — and that feels a lot like the future.