This is gonna put a damper on the Walton Family Super Bowl watch party. Yesterday, Amazon almost certainly passed Walmart in quarterly revenue for the first time ever, reeling in $187.8 billion as the online retailer continued to push its brick-and-mortar rival to its limits.

Amazon beat out the $180 billion in Q4 revenue that analysts expect Walmart to report in two weeks, robbing the American institution of one of its last vestiges of superiority. Walmart has held on tight to its title as the No. 1 revenue-generating company in the world for the last 12 years, though Amazon’s had a higher market cap ($2.5 trillion) than Walmart ($826 billion) since 2015.

It’s not just about your shopping cart

Your Smeg kettle and Nest candle orders didn’t make this happen. While Walmart makes most of its profit from retail sales, Amazon makes a large portion of its profit from the non-retail operations that it’s ramped up in recent years:

• Revenue from Amazon Web Services, its cloud computing service, has more than doubled since 2020. It accounts for ~17% of annual sales.
• Amazon also has a supremely fast-growing digital ad service, which grew 19% year over year in Q3 2024, bringing in $14 billion.

Both are learning from each other. Walmart is taking a page from Amazon’s playbook by making a name for itself in the digital ad biz. It bought TV company Vizio last year, aiming to mimic how Amazon uses Prime Video to deliver ads. Its in-store ad business, Walmart Connect, grew 30% from 2023 to 2024.

On the flip side, Amazon is trying to bulk up its grocery sales—the one department where Walmart has a clear lead—with delivery subscription services for Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods.—CC

Judge pauses deadline for Trump’s federal worker buyout offer. A federal judge in Massachusetts barred the White House from implementing last night’s deadline for federal workers to accept a buyout, pausing the offer until at least Monday, when he’ll hear arguments questioning its legality. As of yesterday afternoon, more than 60,000—or 3% of the federal workforce—had accepted Trump’s offer, which was part of his and DOGE head Elon Musk’s plan to slash federal spending. Unions representing federal employees sued the government, arguing that it’s unclear if it can fulfill its promise to pay workers through September.

Industrial giant Honeywell splits in three. The US conglomerate will separate its aerospace division from its automation group and spin off its advanced materials business in a move similar to the one GE announced in 2021. It’s a win for activist investor Elliott Investment Management, which called for a breakup last year in light of Honeywell’s dragging share price. GE’s tripartite separation has been deemed a success, with its three separate businesses now worth about four times more together than GE was in 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported. Honeywell’s split leaves the US with precious few industrial conglomerates left.

📵 Bipartisan bill would ban DeepSeek on US government devices. One Republican and one Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee introduced a bill yesterday that would outlaw the DeepSeek chatbot from government-issued devices, contending that the app risks sensitive information being accessed by the Chinese Communist Party. It’s essentially the same rationale that was used to prohibit TikTok on government devices in 2022. China’s DeepSeek has worried lawmakers and rattled the tech industry following reports last month that its artificial intelligence model had caught up to those of OpenAI and other US companies.—AE

Y’all might have to turn the schooner around and take the Magellan route to save a few bucks. Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino denied a statement released this week by the US State Department that Panama had agreed to let US government ships travel the Panama Canal for free.

On Wednesday evening, the State Department’s official X account posted that the free passage would save the US government “millions of dollars a year.” Mulino replied yesterday that the statement was “based on a falsity.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio later clarified that he “expects” Panama to remove the fee.

The back-and-forth comes just a few days after Rubio took his first trip as secretary of state to Panama to visit the canal, where he and Panamanian officials reportedly discussed looking into free passage for US Navy vessels, which make up about 0.5% of the total number of ships that sail through each year. Canal officials warned that the potential change could violate the original 1977 treaty—which handed control of the canal to Panama—because of a clause that requires equal treatment of all canal users.

Big picture: The negotiations with Panama follow Trump’s promise on the campaign trail to take back the canal. The president has argued that China has more control over the canal than it should, which Mulino also denied.—MM

You could be the next owner of everyone’s favorite technology, entertainment, and design conference. After running the show for a quarter-century, TED curator Chris Anderson is “issuing an open invitation to anyone who believes they might have the resources and the ideas to oversee TED for its next 25 years (and beyond!) to step forward,” he announced this week.

Qualifications: You must have 1) a creative vision for TED’s future, including how to leverage new tech like AI. 2) a commitment to keeping TED nonpartisan and free to watch, and to continue to license via TEDx. 3) Enough funding to make it all happen: “The willingness to commit significant capital for the long term will be an important deciding factor,” Anderson noted.

The new TEDitor-in-chief will take control of all franchise operations. That will mean overseeing:

• TED’s self-titled business arm and the nonprofit that owns it, the TED Foundation, which has ~$25 million in reserve funds. Anderson is currently its sole director.
• TED’s annual flagship conference, which typically sells out its 1,500-seat custom theater in Vancouver. Most tickets to this year’s event—headlined by Sam Altman—cost $12,500, Wired reported.
• Billions of views and millions of paid subscribers across TED’s social media, newsletters, podcasts, and educational platform.

Well-endowed universities, Big Tech companies, and philanthropies are expected to apply. Anderson will make the final decision.—ML

That sound you’re hearing is your office’s intern getting into the fetal position and gently rocking back and forth, knowing their morning coffee run just got harder. As part of new Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol’s turnaround plan, the coffee giant announced changes to its popular mobile ordering system, including reducing the limit of items allowed per order from 15 to 12. Earlier this week, Niccol said mobile orders have “chipped away” at the company’s soul.

Starbucks will also outlaw adding a splash of milk or lemonade to the Refresher drink and ordering a caffè americano without water, Bloomberg reported. The restrictions are meant to clamp down on the number of large, complicated orders that are a nightmare for baristas, leading to delays and unhappy customers. More changes are coming: Sbux will cut 30% of its menu by September to further simplify things.—AE

The feeling of getting a 5/5 on the Brew’s Weekly News Quiz has been compared to when your PhD in egg science finally comes in handy.

It’s that satisfying. Ace the quiz.