Fortune 500

The Fortune 500 is an annual list compiled and published by Fortune magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States corporations by total revenue for their respective fiscal years.^[1] The list includes publicly held companies, along with privately held companies for which revenues are publicly available. The concept of the Fortune 500 was created by Edgar P. Smith, a Fortune editor, and the first list was published in 1955.^[2][3] The Fortune 500 is more commonly used than its subset Fortune 100 or superset Fortune 1000.^[4]

The Fortune 500, created by Edgar P. Smith, was first published in 1955.^[2] The original top ten companies were General Motors, Jersey Standard, U.S. Steel, General Electric, Esmark, Chrysler, Armour, Gulf Oil, Mobil, and DuPont.^[5]

The original Fortune 500 was limited to companies whose revenues were derived from manufacturing, mining, and energy exploration.^[6] At the same time, Fortune published companion "Fortune 50" lists of the 50 largest commercial banks (ranked by assets), utilities (ranked by assets), life insurance companies (ranked by assets), retailers (ranked by gross revenues) and transportation companies (ranked by revenues). Fortune magazine changed its methodology in 1994 to include service companies. With the change came 291 new entrants to the famous list including three in the Top 10.^[7]

As of 2020, the Fortune 500 companies represent approximately two-thirds of the United States' gross domestic product with approximately $14.2 trillion in revenue, $1.2 trillion in profits, and $20.4 trillion in total market value. These revenue figures also account for approximately 18% of the gross world product. The companies collectively employ a total of 29.2 million people worldwide, or nearly 0.4% of the world's total population.^[8]

The following is the list of top 20 companies.^[9]

Fortune 500 list of 2024

Rank	Company	State	Industry	Revenue in USD
1	Walmart	Arkansas	General Merchandisers	$648.1 billion
2	Amazon	Washington	Internet Services and Retailing	$574.8 billion
3	Apple	California	Computers, Office Equipment	$383.3 billion
4	UnitedHealth Group	Minnesota	Health Care: Insurance and Managed Care	$371.6 billion
5	Berkshire Hathaway	Nebraska	Insurance: Property and Casualty (stock)	$364.5 billion
6	CVS Health	Rhode Island	Health Care: Pharmacy and Other Services	$357.8 billion
7	ExxonMobil	Texas	Petroleum Refining	$344.6 billion
8	Alphabet Inc.	California	Internet Services and Retailing	$307.4 billion
9	McKesson Corporation	Texas	Wholesalers: Health Care	$276.7 billion
10	Cencora	Pennsylvania	Wholesalers: Health Care	$262.2 billion
11	Costco	Washington	General Merchandisers	$242.3 billion
12	JPMorgan Chase	New York	Commercial Banks	$239.4 billion
13	Microsoft	Washington	Computer Software	$211.9 billion
14	Cardinal Health	Ohio	Wholesalers: Health Care	$205.0 billion
15	Chevron Corporation	California	Petroleum Refining	$200.9 billion
16	Cigna	Connecticut	Health Care: Pharmacy and Other Services	$195.3 billion
17	Ford Motor Company	Michigan	Motor Vehicles & Parts	$176.2 billion
18	Bank of America	North Carolina	Commercial Banks	$171.9 billion
19	General Motors	Michigan	Motor Vehicles & Parts	$171.8 billion
20	Elevance Health	Indiana	Health Care: Insurance and Managed Care	$171.3 billion

This is the list of the top 18 states with the most companies within the Fortune 500 as of 2021.^[10]

Breakdown by state

Rank	State	Companies
1	California	53
	New York	53
3	Texas	49
4	Illinois	28
5	Ohio	25
6	Pennsylvania	24
7	Virginia	22
8	Florida	20
9	Georgia	19
10	Massachusetts	18
	Minnesota	18
12	Michigan	17
13	New Jersey	16
14	Connecticut	14
15	North Carolina	12
16	Colorado	10
	Missouri	10
	Tennessee	10

• Official website
• Full list of Fortune 500 companies: 1955–2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

This page was last edited on 19 July 2024, at 15:03