Lead
New York — In 2025 Amazon reported $717 billion in sales, surpassing Walmart’s $713 billion and ending Walmart’s 13-year streak as the world’s largest company by revenue, company statements showed Thursday. The shift reflects Amazon’s faster growth outside traditional retail — notably in cloud computing, advertising and subscriptions — which helped offset lower retail margins. Walmart remains a retail powerhouse but has ceded the top spot in total sales as investor attention turns to tech-driven revenue streams. The change is being closely watched by investors, competitors and policymakers for what it signals about the future of retail and cloud services.
Key Takeaways
- Amazon logged $717 billion in sales in 2025, edging past Walmart’s $713 billion for the year.
- AWS contributed nearly $129 billion to Amazon’s 2025 sales, making it a major driver of growth and profits.
- Amazon’s retail operations and third-party marketplace generated about $464 billion in 2025, the largest single component of its revenue.
- Amazon also earned more than $100 billion combined from advertising and Prime-related revenue in 2025.
- More than 90% of Walmart’s sales in 2025 came from its physical stores and ecommerce sites, underscoring its reliance on bricks-and-mortar volume.
- Walmart’s market value recently passed $1 trillion, and the company moved its listing to Nasdaq, signaling a strategic repositioning toward technology.
- Walmart reported U.S. sales growth of 4.6% in the most recent quarter under CEO John Furner.
Background
The competition between Amazon and Walmart has evolved from simple price and assortment battles into a contest over digital services, cloud infrastructure and customer engagement. Walmart dominated global retail sales for 13 years through scale in physical stores, low-cost supply chains and a broad product assortment. Amazon began as an online bookseller in 1994 and expanded into a diversified platform business with a heavy emphasis on cloud services (AWS), digital advertising and subscription services like Prime.
Amazon’s diversification has changed how revenue and profit are allocated across sectors: high-margin services such as AWS significantly improve overall profitability even when core retail margins are thin. Walmart, meanwhile, has invested heavily in ecommerce, logistics and store remodels to keep physical traffic and market share, especially among price-sensitive U.S. shoppers. The two firms now occupy overlapping but distinct competitive spaces: Walmart remains dominant in everyday grocery and in-store volume, while Amazon leads in cloud infrastructure and digital monetization.
Main Event
The sales figures announced this week show Amazon at $717 billion for 2025, versus $713 billion at Walmart, according to the companies’ published results and media reporting. Amazon’s gain is the result of combined advances: AWS growth, expansion of advertising inventory, and rising subscription revenue from Prime. The $129 billion from AWS is particularly notable because it is both large in absolute terms and far more profitable than typical retail sales, changing the economics of Amazon’s business mix.
Amazon reported roughly $464 billion in revenue from its online and physical stores plus third-party sellers, indicating that retail remains its largest single revenue source by dollars even as services grow faster. Advertising and subscription income together exceeded $100 billion in 2025, illustrating how non-retail products are becoming a significant revenue stream. Walmart’s sales remain heavily concentrated in its stores and owned ecommerce platform, accounting for more than 90% of its revenue, and the retailer continues to expand services and online capabilities.
Walmart has countered by strengthening its U.S. business and signaling strategic change to investors: its market capitalization recently topped $1 trillion and it moved its stock listing to Nasdaq to emphasize technology-facing ambitions. Under CEO John Furner, Walmart said U.S. sales increased 4.6% in the most recent quarter, and the company is pursuing pricing, assortment and omnichannel investments to retain market share against competitors like Target and Amazon.
Analysis & Implications
Amazon overtaking Walmart in sales is significant because it reflects a structural shift in how large consumer-facing companies generate revenue. High-margin, scalable businesses such as cloud computing and digital ads can move a company up the revenue and profit ladder even when core retail margins are constrained. AWS’s near-$129 billion contribution in 2025 both diversifies Amazon’s revenue base and underpins its earnings power.
For Walmart, the loss of the sales crown does not equate to operational weakness: the company’s core retail flows remain robust, especially among middle- and upper-income U.S. households seeking value. Walmart’s $1 trillion-plus market valuation and Nasdaq listing show investor confidence in its modernization push, but the firm’s heavy reliance on physical stores means it faces limits that cloud and ad-driven businesses do not.
Investors will watch margins and free cash flow more closely than headline sales going forward. Amazon’s services-heavy mix tends to boost margins, which can support higher valuations; Walmart’s volume-led model generates steady cash but thinner margins. The two models imply different investor theses: growth and platform monetization for Amazon versus scale and margin efficiency for Walmart.
Regulatory and competitive dynamics also matter. As tech-driven revenues grow, Amazon faces scrutiny over market power in cloud and advertising, while Walmart’s continued expansion into digital services could invite new regulatory and competitive pressures. International exposure, supply-chain resilience and labor costs will all influence each company’s trajectory in the coming years.
Comparison & Data
| Company | 2025 Sales | Retail/store revenue | Services (AWS / Ads / Subscriptions) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon | $717 billion | $464 billion (stores & third-party) | ~$129 billion (AWS) + >$100 billion (ads & Prime) |
| Walmart | $713 billion | >90% of sales from stores & websites | Smaller proportion from digital services |
The table highlights how Amazon’s services mix (AWS, advertising and subscriptions) stacks up alongside its large retail revenue base, while Walmart’s sales remain concentrated in traditional retail channels. Amazon’s services are more margin-accretive, which can translate to stronger profitability even with similar top-line figures. Walmart’s strength in physical retail continues to provide volume advantages, pricing power and logistical scale that are difficult to replicate.
Reactions & Quotes
Walmart framed the results as validation of its strategic shift and operational progress, pointing to recent gains in U.S. revenue and a push into technology and marketplaces.
The pace of change in retail is accelerating.
John Furner, Walmart CEO
Furner further emphasized that the company views its financial performance as evidence that it is adapting to those changes.
Our financial results show that we’re not only embracing this change, we’re leading it.
John Furner, Walmart CEO
Market commentators and investors noted that Amazon’s expanded revenue streams — especially AWS and advertising — are key to the company’s upward movement in aggregate sales figures, while Walmart’s market-cap milestone and Nasdaq listing were seen as a signal of strategic repositioning.
Unconfirmed
- Whether Amazon’s sales lead represents a sustained, structural advantage or a single-year result driven by one-time factors is not yet confirmed and will depend on future growth and margin trends.
- The long-term effect of Walmart’s Nasdaq listing on its strategic direction and valuations remains uncertain and has not been definitively shown to change operating fundamentals.
- Future AWS growth rates, and the extent to which advertising and subscription revenue can continue to expand, are projections that remain subject to market and regulatory risks.
Bottom Line
Amazon’s $717 billion in 2025 sales edged out Walmart’s $713 billion and marks a notable moment in the rivalry between a digitally diversified platform and a scale-driven retailer. The decisive factor is not only top-line revenue but where that revenue comes from: high-margin services such as AWS and advertising give Amazon a different financial profile than Walmart’s store-centric model.
For investors and industry watchers, the important metrics to track going forward are margins, free cash flow and the growth trajectory of services revenue at Amazon, alongside Walmart’s ability to convert scale into sustainable profit improvements. Both companies remain dominant in their areas of strength, and the shifting mix of revenue underscores broader changes in retail, cloud computing and digital monetization.
Sources
- CNN — news report summarizing company results and statements