- Amazon Web Services has played a key role in helping Amazon surpass Walmart in revenue.
- Of Amazon’s $716.9 billion revenue in FY25, AWS accounted for $128.7 billion, while retail sales amounted to $588.2 billion.
- In a purely apples-to-apples comparison, Amazon’s retail sales are about 18% lower than Walmart’s.
Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) pipped Walmart Inc. (WMT) to become the world’s largest company by sales, even as the Walton-family-founded retail chain edged past Wall Street estimates in its latest quarterly earnings.
Amazon reported revenue of $716.9 billion in the fiscal year 2025, while its retail rival Walmart posted $713.2 billion in revenue during the fiscal year ended Jan. 31, 2026. This brought an end to Walmart’s 13-year reign at the top in terms of revenue, according to an analysis by Fortune.
Amazon shares were down 0.5% in Thursday’s pre-market trade, while Walmart shares were down 0.2%. Retail sentiment on Stocktwits around Amazon trended in the ‘neutral’ territory at the time of writing, while users felt ‘extremely bullish’ about Walmart.
AWS Helps Amazon Beat Walmart
Amazon Web Services (AWS), a cloud computing service launched by the Jeff Bezos-founded company, has played a key role in helping the Seattle, Washington-headquartered giant beat Walmart in terms of revenue.
Of Amazon’s $716.9 billion revenue in FY25, AWS accounted for $128.7 billion, while retail sales amounted to $588.2 billion. In a purely apples-to-apples comparison, Amazon’s retail sales are about 18% lower than Walmart’s.
Beyond propelling Amazon to the top in terms of revenue, AWS also accounts for more than half of the company’s operating income. During the fiscal year 2025, the operating income of the AWS segment stood at $45.6 billion, while Amazon’s total operating income was $79.98 billion.
In contrast, Walmart’s operating income in its latest fiscal year was $29.8 billion.
The Origins Of AWS
The launch of AWS is an example of how Amazon turned a solution it arrived at for its own needs into a multi-billion-dollar business.
During the early 2000s, Amazon faced challenges in provisioning and managing its IT infrastructure as its e-commerce business scaled. In solving its IT troubles, the company created a shared platform so different parts of the company could leverage these solutions and shift their focus back to serving customers.
Amazon opened AWS to all developers in a limited form in 2002, and by 2004, over 100 applications were built on it. Seeing the developer interest in its web services, Amazon officially launched AWS in the spring of 2006.
AMZN stock is down 11% year-to-date, while WMT stock is up 14%.
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