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Profit Margins of the Largest Companies
The world’s biggest companies generate enormous revenues, but the share that ultimately becomes profit varies widely.
This graphic ranks the world’s 30 largest companies by how much profit they generate for every $100 in revenue, based on Fortune Global 500 data. Profits are after taxes, extraordinary credits or charges, accounting changes, and noncontrolling interests, but before preferred dividends.
Revenue measures how much money flows through a company, but not how much ultimately reaches the bottom line. Across the world’s largest companies, Big Tech stands apart in how much of that revenue becomes profit.
The gap is striking even among corporate giants. Microsoft generates $36.10 in profit for every $100 in revenue, compared with roughly $3 for Walmart and Costco. Enormous revenue does not necessarily translate into an equally large profit margin.
Much of the difference comes down to business models. Software and digital platforms can serve additional customers at relatively low incremental cost, while retailers, manufacturers, and energy companies must continually pay for inventory, labor, raw materials, logistics, or production.
The margins shown above reflect today’s business models, but AI is making many of those models more capital-intensive. Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into AI infrastructure. Hyperscaler capital spending is on track to reach $785 billion in 2026 and rise to nearly $1 trillion in 2027.
Nvidia is a major beneficiary of this investment. As a dominant supplier of AI chips, it sits at the center of the infrastructure buildout, while its CUDA software ecosystem can make switching to rival chips more difficult for developers.
On the flipside, the scale of AI investment is raising capital costs across Big Tech. As infrastructure spending climbs, those costs could begin to reshape the margins that currently put many tech companies near the top of this ranking.
To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on the world’s largest companies outside the U.S.
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