Amazon

RANK9

A company this big shouldn’t be able to grow this fast—but Amazon’s 21% revenue growth in 2019, to $281 billion, is the reason the Seattle company has moved up four spots on the Global 500. For years a money loser, Amazon earned $11.6 billion in profit on more than $280 billion in annual sales. Key drivers for the so-called Everything Store’s growth? Its consumer bundle keeps expanding. And its Prime delivery and entertainment subscription service counts more than 150 million global customers. As in prior years, the company’s Amazon Web Services unit outpaced the company as a whole, growing revenue at a 37% clip to $35 billion. More recently, the novel coronavirus pandemic accelerated many of the company's big bets: In the company's fiscal second quarter alone (ended June 30, 2020), sales leapt up 40%, year over year, to $88.9 billion. Profits for the quarter, meanwhile, doubled, to $5.2 billion.