Together, they ring up nearly half-a-trillion dollars worth of sales—that’s more revenue each year than the next top five retailers combined, according to the National Retail Federation.

But one is the king of eCommerce, specializing in crunching consumer data and delivery logistics, while the other is a behemoth in the old world of bricks and mortar transactions, at home with shopping carts and Black Friday super deals.

Yet increasingly, Amazon and Walmart are going neck in neck for customers, each competing for the territory of the other. While Amazon has attempted to cross over into physical world sales, Walmart has invested heavily in its online presence.

Who will win the war for your wallet? We take a deeper look at both businesses, and you decide.

Amazon vs Walmart

Founders:

Amazon: Jeff Bezos
Walmart: Sam Walton

Year founded:

Amazon: 1994
Walmart: 1962

Market Cap:

Amazon:  $900 billion
Walmart: $290 billion

Revenues:

Amazon: $178 billion
Walmart: $500 billion annually, as of fiscal year 2018

Number of employees:

Amazon: 566,000
Walmart: 1.5 million

Who owns what?

In addition to consumer-facing businesses such as Zappos, Twitch, and Whole Foods, Amazon owns a suite of tech businesses including cloud services company Amazon Web Services, membership services division Prime, and consumer electronics such as Alexa and Echo products, Kindle, and Fire.

Amazon also owns other e-commerce companies, including Souq.com, which specializes in retail sales in the Middle East.

Walmart owns numerous other retailers both in the US and around the globe, such as men’s fashion wear company Bonobos, online retailer Jet.com, and the membership-only wholesale warehouse chain Sam’s Club. It also owns e-Commerce company Flipkart, of India.

It also has a toe into the world of streaming media. The company announced plans to get into the binge-watching subscription television space with Vudu, in order to compete with Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu.

Amazon’s strengths

Amazon practically invented e-Commerce, and today controls nearly half of all online sales.

Two-thirds of all consumers in the U.S. have bought from Amazon and nearly one-third purchase from it at least once a month, according to reports. With the recent acquisition of the high-end grocery chain Whole Foods, Amazon has also planted a stake in the ground for physical world sales.

More than a million small businesses today also sell on the Amazon marketplace.

Amazon’s weaknesses

Other online retailers are gunning for its territory.

In 2016, Walmart purchased the online retailer Jet.com, in what analysts said was an attempt to compete directly with Amazon. Overseas, it also faces big competition from companies including e-commerce company Alibaba—which sells to 500 million consumers in China alone.

Walmart’s strengths

By sales volume, Walmart is the largest retailer in the nation, and nearly every American has shopped at Walmart, according to industry data. It specializes in the race to the bottom prices, by squeezing suppliers to offer the lowest cost merchandise they can possibly produce.

Walmart weaknesses

Every year, more consumers shop online, and Walmart has had to play catch up with its digital sales strategy. Its purchase of Jet.com for $3 billion in 2016, according to experts, demonstrated its intention not to be caught napping.

Meanwhile, Walmart estimates digital sales for the company will increase by 40% in 2018. Smaller superstores such as Costco and Target are nipping at its heels.

Want a piece of retail giants?  You can invest in stocks and funds that focus on the business of retail on Stash.

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While many military veterans struggle financially when they leave the service, many have succeeded in taking what they’ve learned during their time in uniform and applying it to the private sector.

These days, veterans are founding companies in all sorts of industries, including telecommunications, retail, finance, coffee companies, construction firms, and manufacturing, to name a few.

“Every day I use the lessons and discipline I learned in the Marine Corps. – Bob Parsons, GoDaddy founder

Here are some of the biggest, most successful companies founded by American veterans.

1. Walmart

The country’s biggest private company–and its largest private employer–was founded by Sam Walton. Walton served as a captain in the Army during World War II, from 1942 until 1945, as did his brother and co-founder, Bud, who was a Navy pilot in the Pacific theater.

Walmart (WMT) was started with $5,000 saved from the Walton’s military days, with the original store opening up in Bentonville, Arkansas in 1951.

2. Nike

“Just Do It” could very well be the motto for any military branch, as well as Nike’s slogan. It makes sense then that Nike (NKE), the Oregon-based athletic company, was co-founded by an Army veteran, Phil Knight.

Knight enlisted in the army after graduating from the University of Oregon in 1959, serving one year, and ultimately serving in the reserves for seven years.

3. FedEx

Before getting into the shipping business, FedEx (FDX) founder Fred Smith led an adventurous life. After attending Yale (where he came up with the initial idea for FedEx), Smith joined the Marines and served two tours in Vietnam, and was almost killed during an enemy ambush.

After returning home, Smith raised more than $90 million in venture capital, and FedEx started shipping in 1973.

4. Kinder Morgan

Kinder Morgan (KMI), one of the biggest energy companies in the U.S., was founded by Richard Kinder, a veteran of the Vietnam War. Prior to starting the company with his co-founder William Morgan in 1997, Kinder served in the Army as a Captain.

Before joining the Army, however, Kinder went to law school at the University of Missouri, which allowed him to serve as a Judge Advocate General officer, or a military lawyer.

5. GoDaddy

Web registration company GoDaddy (GDDY) was founded in 1997 by Bob Parsons. Parsons, too, was a veteran of the Vietnam War, having enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1968. While in Vietnam, Parsons became a decorated soldier, earning a Purple Heart, the Combat Action Ribbon, and Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry.

“Every day I use the lessons and discipline I learned in the Marine Corps,” Parsons says on his website. “I absolutely would not be where I am today without the experiences I had in the Marine Corps.”

Want to invest in companies in the defense industry? Check out our selection of single stocks and themed investments on Stash.

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Walmart, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, reported strong financial results for its second quarter on Thursday. The world’s largest retailer, which has annual revenue of nearly $500 billion, is benefitting from pouring cash into increasing in-store customer experiences, and amping up its online presence, financial analysts say.

Here are some highlights from Walmart’s second quarter earnings report:

• Revenue, or customer sales, increased 2.1% to $124 billion.
• Its comparable store sales increased 1.8%. This metric, sometimes referred to as same-store sales, compares the second quarter sales for Walmart stores that have been open for at least one year, to their sales in the same quarter a year earlier. Retailers use same-store sales data to get a clear picture of store performance. This is Walmart’s 12th consecutive quarter of same-store sales increases, according to the retailer.
• Walmart’s same-store traffic also ticked up 1.3%.
• The company’s operating expenses, or amount of cash it spent in the quarter, levered up about 4% as it increased expenditures on its ecommerce offering.

Walmart is increasingly going head to head with ecommerce king Amazon, which dominates sales in the online world. Walmart has made significant investments in its own ecommerce offerings in recent years, including through its 2016 purchase of Jet.com for $3 billion, which helped it increase its distribution network for online sales, analysts say.

Both Walmart and Amazon are also competing over grocery sales. Amazon’s recent purchase of Whole Foods signalled its intent to become a serious player in that sector, experts say. Similarly, Walmart gets more than half of its revenue from food sales, which also contributed to strong growth in the quarter, the company said in its earnings report.

Key takeaways: While the retail segment has been in a slump for the past year or more, there are bright spots. Walmart is one of them. The company posted strong earnings for its most recent quarter, thanks to online and grocery sales.

You may also want to read: What to Make of All the Layoffs in the Retail Industry

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