Leading Chinese tech giants, including JD.com, Tencent Holdings, and Alibaba Group, have strengthened their standings on the latest edition of the Fortune Global 500 list. JD.com was the highest-ranked technology company from mainland China on this year’s list, climbing three spots from 44th to 41st. It also remains the most valuable privately-held company in the country.
In the first quarter, JD.com reported over 740 million active users annually, marking ten consecutive quarters of double-digit growth. Additionally, in March, the company open-sourced its multimodal language model, JoyAI-LLM Flash.
Alibaba moved up seven positions to rank 56th, generating $144.2 billion in revenue last year, with a net profit of $14.6 billion. Despite increased investments in instant retail and AI infrastructure, the company has faced pressures from declining profitability in recent years.
Huawei Technologies broke into the top 100 for the second year in a row, now ranked 81st, an improvement from 83rd last year. Over the past year, Huawei shifted focus from survival to growth, showcasing notable innovations like the Atlas 950 SuperPoD computing solution introduced at the Mobile World Congress in February. In May, it also introduced the Tau (τ) Scaling Law, suggesting a shift from geometric to time-based scaling for semiconductors and electronic systems. Over six years, the company has designed and produced 381 chip models based on this new approach.
Tencent advanced to 97th, up from 116th, with revenues soaring 14% to CNY 751.8 billion (approximately USD 111 billion), and operating profit increasing 18% to CNY 280.7 billion last year. The company has made notable strides in AI, launching products like the full-scenario AI workbench WorkBuddy and testing the grayscale version of WeChat’s AI assistant, Xiaowei. Whether these AI initiatives will translate into sustained revenue remains uncertain.
Chinese white goods manufacturers exceeded expectations on the list, outperforming their Japanese and South Korean counterparts. Midea Group improved from 246th to 231st place, ahead of South Korea’s LG Electronics at 238th and Japan’s Panasonic Holdings at 286th. Haier Smart Home rose from 390th to 378th.
The companies listed on the Fortune Global 500 generated approximately $43.1 trillion in total revenue this year, marking a 3.2% increase from the previous year and representing over a third of the world’s gross domestic product. Their collective net profit reached approximately $2.4 trillion, up 14%, with record-breaking total and net assets.
For the first time, Amazon surpassed Walmart’s 12-year run as the largest company worldwide by revenue, climbing from second to first place. Seven of the top ten companies are part of the technology industry.