Good morning. I’m Alyson Shontell, Fortune’s editor-in-chief.
Seventy years ago, we published the first-ever Fortune 500, our authoritative ranking of America's largest corporations by revenue.
The business world looked a lot different then. America was in the middle of a manufacturing boom, so Fortune’s editors focused the inaugural list on “industrials"—like oil producers, steelmakers, car companies and meatpackers.
Today, manufacturing is a much smaller share of the American economy. Retailers, banks, tech, and health care companies now dominate. And the Fortune 500 has been reaching beyond industrials since 1995, making it an authoritative scorecard for the whole business world.
Our 70th edition of the Fortune 500 dropped this morning, and a few key trends stand out:
—Diversity in the corner office has stalled. Only 52 women run Fortune 500 companies, the same number as last year. There are only 8 black CEOs running Fortune 500s.
—The past year was the “year of efficiency.” Mark Zuckerberg was right. Profits rose faster than revenues across the Fortune 500 as a whole, as inflation, energy prices, and wage growth cooled.
—High interest rates sent the financial sector soaring. 17 of the 20 fastest-growing companies were in this group.
—California is back! For the first time since 2013, California is home to the most Fortune 500 companies. The state was aided by new entrants, including Workday, DoorDash, and Monster Beverage.
—Travel rebounded. The return of business travel globally, along with falling fuel costs, drove higher profits in the airline sector.
—AI went on a rampage. The 30-year-old server company Super Micro Computer joined the Fortune 500 for the first time. Nvidia and Meta joined the trillion-dollar valuation club. Microsoft is the most valuable company in the world, with a valuation exceeding $3 trillion. All those companies can thank investor optimism about AI for their off-the-charts numbers.
—Walmart and Apple can’t be beat. Walmart remained the highest revenue-generating company for the 12th straight year, and Apple remained the most profitable, generating $97 billion in earnings.
Despite so much change over the decades, 49 of the original Fortune 500 companies from 1955 have remained on the list every year. They include Spam-maker Hormel, pharma giant Pfizer, and Exxon Mobil.
Staying big and successful for decades at a time is no easy feat. Microsoft has been on the list every year since we broadened it in 1995. Its earned spot is no accident: It’s a company that has adapted successfully to changing times in tech. As CEO Satya Nadella told Fortune in our latest cover story: "When the paradigm shifts, do you have something to contribute? Because there is no God-given right to exist if you don’t have anything relevant."
Of course, the paradigm shift Nadella is referring to is AI. At Fortune, we think a lot about that shift too. Eight months ago, we partnered with Accenture to reimagine what the Fortune 500 could look like if we paired our decades of historic corporate data with AI, to help users parse out trends and insights more quickly.
The result is our first-ever AI-powered version of the Fortune 500 data, which debuts in closed beta today.
More news below.
Alyson Shontell
alyson.shontell@fortune.com
