For over a decade, Walmart sat comfortably as the king of annual revenue. However, Walmart’s annual revenue report released on Thursday confirmed a change-up on the leaderboard.
The retail company reported $713.2 billion for its most recent fiscal year, boosted by a 24% growth of online sales — but despite this, it still fell just shy of Amazon’s $716.9 billion.
While the decadelong reign on top comes to the end, it wasn’t exactly a shock to the business world. Amazon had already signaled its potential leading revenue early last year when its quarterly sales surpassed Walmart’s for the first time.
Amazon’s rise to the top
Amazon’s online store is the company’s primary engine for revenue, while the way it has diversified its services is where the growth has come from. According to CNBC, cloud computing, advertising and seller services have become key to the retailer’s revenue. In fact, third-party sellers, including commissions and fulfillment fees, accounted for roughly 24% of Amazon’s total sales in 2025, according to the company’s report. Meanwhile, Amazon Web Services contributed 18% of total revenue.
While it dominates the online market, Amazon still faces a physical hurdle. The retail giant has struggled to cement a brick-and-mortar footprint despite its 2017 purchase of Whole Foods. In contrast, Walmart remains a physical giant with over 2 million employees and nearly 11,000 stores globally, according to NPR.
Despite losing the top spot, Walmart isn’t standing still, and it hasn’t dropped in sales, either. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The company’s revenue has more than doubled in 20 years, and it is leveraging its 4,600 U.S. stores to power its business online that grew 27% in the last quarter, according to CNBC. It has also reported double-digit percentage increases for 15 straight quarters.
In early February, Walmart’s stock value went over $1 trillion in market value, while Amazon’s topped $2 trillion in 2024, according to NPR.
The AI race
As both companies’ largest market is the U.S. and as they compete for the same dollar, they have been moving to artificial intelligence to succeed. Both have stepped into the race, with their own shopping assistants and investments into retail technology.
Walmart partnered with OpenAI’s ChatGPT in October and Google Gemini in January to create a virtual assistant, Sparky. Sparky helps shoppers navigate the app and find products more easily.
Walmart CFO John David Rainey noted that the company is leaning on tech partners rather than building in-house. “This lets tech companies do what they do best, develop innovative technology, and it provides us clarity to do what we do best, to translate the best of tech to retail experiences that create value for our customers and members and our enterprise,” he said on the company’s earnings call.
Walmart highlighted it will be allocating 3.5% of sales toward AI, automation and remodels.
Amazon’s counterpart, Rufus, has already helped with over 300 million users driving nearly $12 billion in incremental sales last year, according to Amazon.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said last month that Rufus and other AI tools could help shoppers find products, just like an employee in a physical store.
“I think agents are going to help customers with that type of discovery,” Jassy said. “And it’s part of why we’ve invested so much in Rufus, which is our shopping assistant.”
Meanwhile, Walmart U.S. CEO David Guggina sees that agentic AI is “strengthening our operations” and is a way to improve “associate productivity, and it’s enhancing the customer experience,” he said on an earnings call.