Definition Box Operating margin is operating income divided by revenue, expressed as a percentage. It measures how much profit a company keeps from its core business after paying for the cost of goods and day-to-day operating expenses, but before interest and taxes. A higher operating margin means more of every sales dollar survives as profit, which makes it the cleanest single number for comparing how efficiently different companies turn revenue into earnings.
NVIDIA is now the most profitable major technology company by operating margin, keeping 60.4 cents of operating profit from every revenue dollar in fiscal 2026. Microsoft ranks second at 45.6%, and Adobe third at 36.6%. The ranking below is built from each company’s most recent annual SEC filing, with every ratio calculated from primary-source figures rather than restated estimates.
The Big Tech Profitability Ranking
Companies are ranked by operating margin, highest first. All figures come from each company’s most recent 10-K. Fiscal years differ because these companies close their books in different months.
| Rank | Company | Fiscal Year | Revenue | Gross Margin | Operating Margin | Net Margin | Return on Equity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | NVIDIA | 2026 | $215.9B | 71.1% | 60.4% | 55.6% | 76.3% |
| 2 | Microsoft | 2025 | $281.7B | 68.8% | 45.6% | 36.1% | 29.6% |
| 3 | Adobe | 2025 | $23.8B | 89.3% | 36.6% | 30.0% | 61.3% |
| 4 | Apple | 2025 | $416.2B | 46.9% | 32.0% | 26.9% | 151.9% |
| 5 | Alphabet | 2025 | $402.8B | n/r | 32.0% | 32.8% | 31.8% |
| 6 | Oracle | 2025 | $57.4B | n/r | 30.8% | 21.7% | 60.8% |
| 7 | Qualcomm | 2025 | $44.3B | n/r | 27.9% | 12.5% | n/r |
| 8 | Cisco | 2025 | $56.7B | 64.9% | 20.8% | 18.0% | 21.7% |
| 9 | Salesforce | 2026 | $41.5B | 77.7% | 20.1% | 18.0% | 12.6% |
| 10 | Meta | 2025 | $201.0B | n/r | 41.4% | 30.1% | 27.8% |
| 11 | Amazon | 2025 | $716.9B | n/r | 11.2% | 10.8% | 18.9% |
| 12 | IBM | 2025 | $67.5B | 58.2% | n/r | 15.7% | 32.4% |
n/r = not reported as a standardized line in the company’s filing. See methodology below.
What the Ranking Reveals
The chip maker beat every software company on profit efficiency. That is the headline most readers will not expect. Software is supposed to be the high-margin business, yet NVIDIA, which sells physical hardware, posts a 60.4% operating margin that no pure-software peer matches. The reason is pricing power. NVIDIA’s data-center accelerators have no close substitute at scale, so the company captures a margin that looks more like a software monopoly than a hardware vendor.
Revenue size and margin quality are two different stories. Amazon books $716.9 billion in revenue, more than three times NVIDIA’s, yet converts only 11.2% of it into operating profit. Amazon’s model trades margin for scale and reach. NVIDIA does the opposite. Looking only at the revenue column would tell you Amazon is the giant. Looking at the margin column tells you which giant is more profitable per dollar, which is the more useful question for understanding a business model.
Apple’s 151.9% return on equity is real, not an error. A return on equity above 100% looks impossible, but it reflects years of aggressive share buybacks that have shrunk Apple’s book equity faster than its earnings. When a company returns enormous cash to shareholders, the equity base gets small enough that even normal profits divide into a very large percentage. It is a signal of capital-return strategy, not accounting magic.
Adobe’s 89.3% gross margin shows the software ceiling. Adobe keeps almost 90 cents of gross profit per revenue dollar, the highest in the group. That is the pure-software advantage. The gap between that gross margin and its 36.6% operating margin is the cost of growth: sales, marketing, and research that software companies spend heavily on to keep expanding.
Methodology
Every figure is pulled directly from each company’s most recent annual report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, using structured XBRL data. Each row is anchored to a single fiscal year, so revenue and profit always come from the same period.
Fiscal years differ across companies. NVIDIA and Salesforce close their books in early 2026, while most peers report fiscal 2025. Gross margin is shown as “not reported” for companies that do not present a standardized gross profit subtotal in their income statement. Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Oracle, and Qualcomm structure their statements around cost categories rather than a single gross profit line, so a directly comparable gross margin is not available for them, and we leave it blank rather than estimate one.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which big tech company is the most profitable?
By operating margin, NVIDIA is the most profitable major technology company, keeping 60.4% of revenue as operating profit in fiscal 2026. By absolute net income, Alphabet leads the group at $132.2 billion, followed by Apple at $112.0 billion.
Why is operating margin a better comparison than net income?
Net income can be distorted by one-time tax items, interest costs, and accounting adjustments that have little to do with how the core business performs. Operating margin strips those out, so it compares the profitability of the actual business model more fairly across companies.
Why don’t Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta show a gross margin?
These companies build their income statements around specific cost categories rather than a single consolidated gross profit line. Because there is no standardized gross profit figure to pull, calculating a comparable gross margin for them would require assumptions that break comparability, so the figure is left blank.
What fiscal year does this data cover?
Each company is shown for its most recent completed fiscal year as filed with the SEC. Because companies close their books in different months, the table mixes fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2026 reporting periods. Every individual row is internally consistent to one period.
The Business Model Analyst Take
The most important lesson in this table is that scale and profitability are not the same thing, and confusing them is one of the most common mistakes in reading a business. Amazon is the revenue giant. NVIDIA is the margin king. Both are dominant, but they win in opposite ways: one by moving enormous volume at thin margins, the other by selling a scarce product almost no one else can supply.
For anyone studying these companies, the practical move is to read the margin column and the revenue column as two separate questions. Revenue tells you how big a company is. Margin tells you how good the underlying business is at turning that size into profit. The companies that command both, like NVIDIA and Microsoft right now, are the ones with genuine pricing power. The ones leaning on scale alone are more exposed the moment that volume slows.
Source data: company 10-K filings via SEC EDGAR. [Internal link: confirm a relevant BMA company analysis URL via site:businessmodelanalyst.com before publishing.] [External link: cite the specific filing or newsroom source for any company you quote directly.]
