Asia Tech Wire (Aug 5) -- Amazon has regained its position as the world's second-largest company, the latest Fortune list shows.

Fortune released the Fortune 500 ranking for 2024 on Sunday, featuring companies with combined operating revenues of about $41 trillion, equivalent to about one-third of global GDP, a slight increase of about 0.1% from last year.

Notably, the combined net income of all the companies on the list increased by 2.3% year-on-year to about $2.97 trillion.

Among the companies, Walmart was the world's largest company for the eleventh consecutive year, while Amazon returned to second place.

China's State Grid continued in third place, with Saudi Aramco and Sinopec in fourth and fifth place, respectively.

Overall profits for the 500 companies are back on a growth track. Saudi Aramco's profits, though down about 24% year-on-year, remained at the top of the list of most profitable companies with about $120.7 billion in profits.

Three U.S. tech companies - Apple, Google parent Alphabet and Microsoft - came in second, fourth and fifth on the list of most profitable companies, respectively.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, which lost the most money on last year's Fortune 500 list, was the third-most profitable company this year with more than $96.2 billion in profits.

Three Chinese companies were among the top 10 on the profit list - Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), China Construction Bank (CCB) and Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) - with ICBC posting profits of more than $51.4 billion.