2024 Fortune 500 rankings: Here's who made the list this year

Fortune has announced their Fortune 500 rankings for 2024. The magazine, which is out this morning, names Walmart number one for the 12th year in a row. Other names at the top of the list include Amazon, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, CVS and many more. And joining us right now is Alison Chantelle. She's the editor in chief and chief content officer of Fortune magazine. OK, first question for you, Alison. If Walmart's at the top is number one, how come Sachin Adela, the head of Microsoft's on the cover? AI, OK, this is the year of AI. They're #13 it's not so bad on a list of 500. But under, under Nadella, who's been in the role for 10 years now as CEO, Microsoft has grown in value by 1010 X. So now they are the world's most valuable company. They have a $3.1 trillion value. So I'd say he's achieved quite a bit to be on the cover. Yeah. I mean, that is quite a move. If they've grown tenfold. Where were they before he came in with Ballmer? No, no. But where were they on the rankings? Oh, much, much, much lower. I mean, they've still been there ever since 1995 when we opened the list up to service companies as well as industrials, which is how the list started. They've been on the list every year since, but they've grown very steadily and very significantly under him. OK, let's talk about some other trends that you've seen. What? What else kind of caught your attention when you were looking at the rankings? This time, say, was the year of efficiency. Mark Zuckerberg was right. Profits grew faster than revenues, although both grew a bit year over year travels back. We saw fuel costs come down and we also saw global business travel open back up, and that boosted profits for the airline companies as well as revenues. And then AI again, I mean, you've seen a video jump. Its revenue jumped 126% year over year. It jumped 86 spots on the Fortune 500, breaking into finally the Fortune 50 for the first time. So some significant gains there. Tesla jumped 10 spots. Part of that was the boost in the revenue due to bringing down the price of their cars last year. But those are some of the big movers. How, how do you calculate the list Revenue, just revenue alone? Just revenue. But you look at all these other factors too. We do. I mean, we, we look at all sorts of things, but really comes down to the revenue. There's a lot of ways you could, you could do this list. Historically, it's always been revenue and we've never changed it. And what, what else have you noticed just in terms of diversity measures you say have stalled only 10% of the Fortune 500? Yes. So there's still 52 women running Fortune 500 companies And actually increase from what it was, I remember a time, oh, there was 06 or eight. Yes, there was 0. And low started in 1972. We got our first, It's Katherine Graham. But really it's ticked up. The last two years have been the first two years where there's ever been more than 10% of companies run by women. And then for black CEO's, it's it's dismal. It's only 8. High interest rates had a pretty big impact this time around too. How did that change things? Yes, So 17 of the 20 fastest growing companies on the list were from the financial sector, which hugely benefited from the high interest rates that we see that pretty significantly going through the the course of the year. I mean, you look at all of these different things that are moving and what, what other trends have you picked up over time? I mean, there's so much money that's indexed to the S&P 500 at this point. It's a very closely tracked index, very closely followed. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think, I really can't put my finger on it enough that AI is here and it is making moves all over the list. And I think we haven't even seen the private sector really come in in a meaningful way. But even if you look at a super micro just squeaked onto the list this year, it's a 30 year company. But for the last five years, it's really seen explosive growth because of AI. It's a server company, NVIDIA, again, I think just like the huge gains that they've seen over the last year even and they continue to see and then Microsoft, but that's diversification of different services of AI that they invest in has really seen this trajectory grow. I think Amazon is being impacted by AIA bit in a in a positive way, yet to see Apple really step up, but I'm sure that they will. But you're seeing it start to transform the Fortune 500 and over the next decade, I think we'll significantly see changes. So what got knocked down if you have AI that's making such a big difference in financials moving up the list, what got knocked out? What got knocked down? Yeah, there were a couple of one off companies like Coinbase showed its face once and like never again when there was sort of this this boom open door was, you know, when real estate, real estate had a different year, a tougher year and so to say the later statement. And so yes, so they have been knocked down. So there's a few like that that have kind of fallen off, and then there's a few that really worked their way on like Monster Beverage. I mean, I don't know if you drink Monster Energy, I do not. But apparently a lot of people do because they made the list for the first time this year. Work Day made the list for the first time this year. So there's a few new entrance.