The biggest companies in America are coming off one of their most profitable years ever. The $1.87 trillion in earnings posted by this year’s Fortune 500 is the most in the history of the list, in nominal dollars. (Adjusted for inflation, the class of 2022 did slightly better.)
Such numbers would have been unimaginable for the CEOs who made our inaugural list in 1955. That year’s 500 combined to post profits of $8.3 billion, about $96 billion in today’s dollars. This year’s most profitable company, Alphabet, earned $100 billion all by itself.
So is the average company on the list vastly more profitable than it was in the sock-hop era? Not exactly. For most of the past 71 years, the combined profit margin of the 500 has fluctuated between 5% and 7% of revenue.
But the past three decades have brought two big changes. First: The biggest companies now have massive scale. The Fortune 500 brought in 12.5 times as much revenue in 2024 as they did in 1955, even accounting for inflation. More revenue, more profit.
The other big difference: “Asset-light” tech and finance companies, which routinely generate margins of 30% or more, have become the backbone of the list, accounting for 53% of the 500’s profits this year. Those industries are the two towers that loom over the business skyline in this data visualization.
This article appears in the June/July 2025 issue of Fortune with the headline “What’s behind a massive year for Fortune 500 profits.”
