Amazon Passes Walmart On Revenue, Resetting Retail And Cloud Trades

Amazon Moves Ahead Of Walmart In Annual Sales

On February 5, 2026, Amazon disclosed 2025 net sales of $716.9 billion, up 12% from $638.0 billion, putting it ahead of Walmart’s $713.2 billion total reported on February 19 for the 12 months ended January 31, 2026. The gap is slim, but Amazon now Tops the revenue table for U.S. corporates, a milestone that can move sentiment across retail stocks and technology-adjacent stocks.

The comparison also reflects different fiscal calendars. Amazon’s year ends December 31, while Walmart’s ends January 31, so the totals capture slightly different timing around the 2025 holiday period. Even with that caveat, investors are treating the change as Resetting assumptions about which business models compound fastest at scale.

Cloud Profitability Changes The Growth Math

Amazon’s 2025 mix helps explain how it Passes traditional retailers on headline sales while still funding large investment programs. North America sales rose 10% to $426.3 billion and International sales increased 13% to $161.9 billion. Amazon Web Services sales grew 20% to $128.7 billion, giving the group a higher-margin base that can subsidize faster delivery, more warehouse automation, and heavy data center spending in 2026.

Operating income rose to $80.0 billion in 2025 from $68.6 billion in 2024, a jump that matters for market pricing because it improves the capacity to self-fund capital expenditure. That cash generation is also one reason the stock often Trades on cloud and services expectations as much as retail demand.

Walmart Still Wins On Defensive Demand

Walmart’s revenue remains anchored in groceries and daily essentials, categories that tend to hold up when inflation squeezes discretionary budgets. In the latest quarter, the company reported revenue of $190.7 billion, up 5.6% year over year, and quarterly operating profit of $8.7 billion, up 10.8%, reflecting continued gains in e-commerce and membership activity.

For the next fiscal year, guidance points to net sales growth of 3.5%–4.5% and adjusted operating income growth of 6%–8%. Those ranges signal stability and scale, but they also underline why Walmart’s top line is more sensitive to unit growth in stores and price mix than to high-margin computing services.

Why The Revenue Crown Matters For Markets

The revenue switch is not just a ranking story; it affects how investors model margins and competitive durability. Amazon’s sales include cloud, advertising, subscriptions, and third-party seller services, categories that can carry structurally higher contribution profit than first-party retail. Walmart’s economics depend more heavily on merchandising spreads, supply chain productivity, and labor efficiency across its store base.

For equity allocation, the milestone can shift how sector baskets are built. Some portfolios treat Amazon as a technology exposure, while Walmart sits in defensive consumer groupings. A larger revenue lead can pull more passive and active attention toward Amazon, and widen dispersion inside consumer staples and consumer discretionary benchmarks.

Cross-Asset Channels: Rates, Credit, And Volatility

In rates, large capital programs tied to data centers and logistics can keep long-end yields sensitive to capex surprises. Faster investment can lift growth expectations, while any slowdown in deployment can support duration demand, especially if consumer indicators soften in the second half of 2026.

In credit, the main channel is refinancing flexibility. Strong operating income can tighten spreads for high-quality issuers, while weaker retailers with thin margins can see wider spreads when freight, wages, or returns costs rise. In volatility, a clear “winner-takes-more” narrative can lift single-name implied moves and drive hedge demand in sector options, particularly around quarterly reports.

Competitive Levers For 2026

Both companies are leaning harder into automation and artificial intelligence. Amazon continues to expand same-day coverage and warehouse robotics, while Walmart is using stores as fulfillment hubs to shorten delivery distance. Advertising is another lever: Amazon’s retail search traffic supports monetization that can grow even if unit volumes slow, while Walmart is scaling its own ad platform to improve margin mix.

A near-term forward trigger is whether Amazon sustains double-digit sales growth in 2026 while keeping fulfillment expense growth below revenue growth. For Walmart, the key trigger is whether e-commerce growth continues to outpace store growth without eroding gross margin, especially if grocery inflation remains subdued.

Base Case, Upside Scenario, Downside Scenario

Base case: Amazon keeps a modest lead as cloud and advertising offset normalization in online retail growth. The trigger is Amazon Web Services expanding near the mid-teens to low-20% range and maintaining steady operating margins.

Upside scenario: enterprise demand for cloud accelerates and advertising grows faster than retail, widening the sales gap beyond $10 billion as consumer spending stays resilient. The trigger is sustained 20% plus cloud growth alongside improving international profitability.

Downside scenario: a consumer slowdown combines with higher shipping and labor costs, while cloud growth decelerates as customers optimize spending. The trigger is cloud growth slipping into the low teens and North America sales growth falling below 8%, pushing de-risking across these Trades on both sides of the Retail and Cloud divide.