- In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady reports on the biggest takeaways from this year’s list.
- The big leadership story: Executives are debating whether to treat agents as colleagues.
- The markets: Mixed globally after the S&P 500 closed at another record.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. The
2026 Fortune 500 is out, and the numbers tell a story of an American corporate landscape that is bigger, more profitable, and more concentrated at the top than at any point in the list’s 72-year history. In aggregate, Fortune 500 companies generated a record $21 trillion in revenues—up 5%—and $2.1 trillion in profits, up 12%. Their combined market value hit $55 trillion, a 19% jump. Together, they represent two-thirds of U.S. GDP and employ 30.5 million people worldwide. The era of scale has never looked more like a competitive moat.
The biggest headline:
Amazon dethrones
Walmart at No. 1, ending a 13-year reign. Amazon debuted on the list at No. 492 in 2002. That ascent—from near the bottom to the very top in just over two decades—is one of the great corporate stories of our time. Walmart is No. 2, a position it hasn’t held since 2012.
But the most striking data point may belong to
Nvidia. Now ranked No. 16, the chipmaker is worth $4.2 trillion in market value—the first Fortune 500 company to cross the $4 trillion threshold—and has surpassed
Apple to claim the title of most valuable company on the list. Nvidia debuted at No. 387 in 2017. It has delivered a 72% annualized 10-year return to shareholders. That is not a typo.
The concentration of power is notable: the four most profitable companies—
Alphabet, Nvidia, Apple, and Meta—each cleared $100 billion in profits, combining for $466 billion, or 22% of the entire Fortune 500’s earnings. The list also reflects a changing leadership landscape: a record 55 female CEOs now run Fortune 500 companies, representing 11% of the total, the fourth consecutive year at or above that threshold.
The Fortune 500 has always been a mirror of the economy. Right now, the reflection shows a world being remade by AI, health care, and a handful of extraordinarily powerful technology companies.
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
