Jeff Bezos has simply been handed the one milestone most founders would body and cling on a wall, and his response was to wave it off. Chatting with Fortune from the unique door-slab desk he inbuilt his Bellevue storage in 1995, now sitting in his Washington, D.C., research, the Amazon founder mentioned bigness was by no means the target. “I don’t need us to take delight in being huge,” he mentioned, including that the delight ought to sit with serving clients, and that development follows from doing that effectively. The remark lands as Amazon takes the No. 1 spot on Fortune’s International 500, making it the biggest firm on the earth by income and ending Walmart’s decade-plus run on the high. Bezos informed Fortune the end result was not an entire shock, which is a really Bezos means of claiming he had performed the mathematics. Amazon is now valued at about $2.6 trillion and is extensively anticipated to grow to be the primary firm to cross $1 trillion in annual income.
Amazon tops the Fortune International 500 because the world’s largest firm by income
The size is less complicated to really feel than to image. Amazon reportedly delivers as many packages because the U.S. Postal Service, AWS underpins roughly a 3rd of the web, and Prime has swollen right into a 200-million-subscriber behavior. Bezos used the phrase “buyer obsession” ten occasions through the Fortune dialog, which tells you the way a lot of the corporate’s working logic nonetheless runs via it. A number of corporations declare to be customer-obsessed, he mentioned, when they’re actually competitor-obsessed.
Amazon AI capex hits $200 billion as Bezos calls silicon the subsequent pillar
The larger story is the place the cash goes. Amazon spent $131 billion on capital expenditure in 2025 and expects to spend round $200 billion in 2026, most of it on AWS and generative AI. Bezos mentioned the chips enterprise is lining as much as grow to be Amazon’s subsequent sturdy pillar, alongside Market, Prime and AWS, and confirmed that Trainium4 arrives subsequent 12 months. Amazon has additionally dedicated as much as $25 billion to Anthropic, which is able to purchase greater than $100 billion of its cloud companies in return.There may be proof the guess is working. Jassy mentioned on the first-quarter earnings name that AWS’s AI income run price handed $15 billion in three years, roughly 260 occasions what AWS itself was doing on the similar age.
FTC lawsuit, 30,000 job cuts and the dangers to Amazon’s buyer obsession
Not everyone seems to be applauding. The FTC and 17 states sued Amazon in 2023 over alleged anticompetitive conduct, with trial anticipated in 2027, and the corporate has minimize practically 30,000 company roles prior to now 12 months. Bezos named the true menace himself: cease obsessing over clients, cease inventing, begin making short-term trades, and Amazon might coast for some time earlier than shedding.
