Fortune 500

WorldBrand briefing

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Original synthesis to sit alongside the encyclopedia article below. Not part of Wikipedia; verify facts on Wikipedia when precision matters.

The Fortune 500 is the flagship annual corporate ranking published by U.S. business magazine Fortune, which catalogs the top 500 largest companies operating in the United States sorted by audited annual revenue. It is one of the most widely cited and influential benchmarks for tracking the scale, composition and economic weight of the U.S. private sector.

Key moments

1955First official standalone Fortune 500 list launched, covering exclusively U.S.-headquartered large firms
1957Fortune released its first dedicated ranking of top non-U.S. large corporations
1976First independent international 500 list for non-U.S. companies published
1995First unified global Fortune Global 500 list launched covering firms across all nations, alongside the launch of the Fortune Global Forum event series
202571st edition of the U.S. Fortune 500 released, with aggregated revenues of listed firms reaching nearly $20 trillion, accounting for two-thirds of total U.S. GDP and employing 31 million people worldwide

Cultural and institutional influence

Over its decades of publication, the Fortune 500 has evolved from a simple data publication to a core cultural marker of business achievement for U.S. firms. Earning a spot on the list is widely framed as a defining career milestone for executive leadership teams, while annual shifts in the ranking are heavily referenced by policymakers, economists and industry analysts to track long-term trends like industry consolidation, the rise of tech giants, and declining presence of legacy manufacturing firms in the top tier of U.S. business.

Methodology distinctiveness

Unlike competing corporate rankings from publications like Forbes that combine multiple weighted metrics including profit, total assets and market capitalization, the Fortune 500 uses verified annual revenue as its single sorting and eligibility criterion. This narrow, consistent focus on top-line scale makes the ranking uniquely suited to measure absolute operational size, rather than relative market valuation or short-term profitability performance.

Global regional ranking ecosystem

The core U.S. Fortune 500 format has spawned a full portfolio of regional sibling rankings, including the Fortune Global 500, Fortune China 500, Fortune 500 Europe, and Fortune Southeast Asia 500. These localized adaptations extend the original benchmark framework to audiences across major global markets, and have become a leading reference point for tracking the growth of large domestic corporate sectors in emerging and mature regional economies outside the United States.

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]

History

The Fortune 500, created by Edgar P. Smith, was first published in January 1955.[2]

Fortune 500

WorldBrand briefing

Cultural and institutional influence

Methodology distinctiveness

Global regional ranking ecosystem

History

Methodology

Influence

Overview

Breakdown by state

Breakdown by metropolitan area

See also

External links

References