Companies You Don’t Expect to be So High on the Fortune 500

The Fortune 500 is a list compiled by Fortune magazine each year and ranks them based on their total revenue. Notably, it can’t include private companies that don’t publicly provide their revenue numbers, so some of the strangest omissions are due to this. Still, there are some surprising ones on there. Here are 15 companies you wouldn’t expect to see so high on the list.

CVS Health

Perhaps the strangest Fortune 500 entry in 2024 is the 6^th overall pick, CVS Health. Despite CVS locations being relatively small, the company raked in tons of cash in 2024 thanks in no small part to its position as a leading pharmacy. What do you know, selling medicine is lucrative!

McKesson Corporation

A running theme on this list is that healthcare and pharmaceutical companies are absolutely raking in the dough. McKesson Corporation, a major infrastructure provider for the healthcare industry that has a relatively low visibility outside of stock exchanges, was 9^th overall on the Fortune 500.

Cencora

The name Cencora might not look familiar, but that could be because they switched themir name over from AmerisourceBergen. That’s a good thing, too, because their old name was a mouthful and looks pretty unsightly on a page! They’re 10^th on the list, which is surprising until you realize that they’re a pharmaceutical company.

Elevance Health

You guessed it, another weirdly high entry on the Fortune 500 is a healthcare company. Elevance Health is 20^th place on the list, which speaks to just how lucrative selling pharmaceuticals and healthcare supplies is. People like staying healthy, it seems, and they’re willing to pay for the privilege.

Home Depot

Despite Millennials and other young people mostly shying away from home improvement projects, Home Depot still managed to be 23^rd overall on the Fortune 500 this year. This is genuinely shocking after all the alarmist headlines about young people killing the home improvement industry.

Fannie Mae

The Federal National Mortgage Association, better known by the hilarious moniker Fannie Mae, was 27^th overall on the Fortune 500. That’s not terribly surprising in a vacuum, but it is weird when you consider that it’s a government-sponsored enterprise that was originally founded as part of the new deal.

Tesla

Another controversial tech company run by a divisive billionaire, Tesla is hanging on to the 40^th overall spot on the Fortune 500 even after the disastrous launch of the Cybertruck. The infamous, ugly vehicle managed to get recalled no fewer than four times in just over half a year after its official launch, but Elon Musk and Tesla don’t seem to have felt the effects of it yet.

Deere

Is it weird that a tractor company managed to get to 64^th overall place on the Fortune 500 in 2024? Well, maybe not. Deere provides a lot of commercial farming equipment, and, last time we checked, everyone needs to eat. The odds are good you’ve already eaten something in the past 24 hours that was harvested by a piece of Deere equipment.

Nvidia

How does a graphics card manufacturer manage to place 65^th overall on the Fortune 500? Well, the answer is simple. PC gamers will pay almost any price to get the latest cutting-edge GPU hardware. That’s not to mention all the cryptocurrency speculators who need powerful GPUs to mine currencies like Bitcoin.

Charter Communications

Streaming TV and movies might be the wave of the future, but for now telecom company Charter Communications is holding strong at 76^th overall on the Fortune 500. Netflix hasn’t managed to fully exorcise all the ghosts of the old cable TV landscape from the upper echelons of American companies.

Warner Bros. Discovery

Even in spite of all the negative press you’ve read about the Warner Bros. and Discovery merger, the new combined company is still sitting happily at 106^th overall on the Fortune 500 list. Yes, that’s after they slashed their budget, canned numerous finished films, and removed shows from Max. Oh, and they dropped the “HBO” off of “HBO Max,” a move that is still baffling.

Dollar General

You’re never that far from a Dollar Geneal. That ubiquitous presence all over the country is part of the reason why this discount store chain is 111^th place on the Fortune 500. Basically, if you need something from the grocery store but don’t want to schlep through a huge Walmart, you can get a decent deal at Dollar General.

Uber

Uber, the ultimate Silicon Valley disruptor app, manages to hang on to a shocking high spot at 113^th overall. That’s even after many cities and states have passed legislation to force the company to reclassify its employees and regulations to control what Uber can and can’t do compared to traditional cab companies.

Starbucks

They might serve $6 cups of mediocre coffee, but Starbucks is still 116^th overall on the Fortune 500. For whatever reason, people can’t get enough of Starbucks’ high-priced drinks, as they still bring in millions of dollars across their innumerable location all around the world.