Walmart's U.S. third-party marketplace grew nearly 50% in the first quarter of fiscal 2027, its fastest pace in years. Walmart's marketplace is growing faster now than at almost any point since it opened to international sellers, and it is doing so from a base small enough that the runway remains long.
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U.S. e-commerce grew 9.8% year over year in the first quarter of 2026, nearly double the rate posted in each of the prior four quarters. It was the strongest quarter in over two years, yet weaker than it sounds.
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Third-party sellers accounted for 60% of paid units sold on Amazon in Q1 2026, down from 61% in Q4 2025 and 62% the quarter before that. It's the first time the metric has fallen for two consecutive quarters since Amazon began breaking it out in its quarterly reports in 2004.
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Sellers have adopted AI broadly but narrowly, putting it to work overwhelmingly on content tasks like listings and imagery, while platforms rebuild discovery around AI and consumers adopt it faster than expected.
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Sellers are frustrated with platform fees yet deepen their dependence on Amazon because alternatives don't offer comparable scale. Amazon extracts more revenue from sellers while becoming more vulnerable to a concentrated base that could, in theory, coordinate or exit.
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Amazon remains the dominant U.S. marketplace, with an estimated $300 billion in third-party sales, more than seven times eBay's and roughly 20 times that of the next competitors – Temu, TikTok Shop, and Walmart – who now compete in a tight $15-22 billion range.
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Amazon Haul, Amazon's direct-from-China section for items under $20, has reached over 3,000 sellers since launching in November 2024, establishing itself as a credible competitor to Temu and Shein, though still smaller in scale.
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Walmart's advertising business grew more than twice as fast as Amazon's last year. Amazon generated $68.6 billion in advertising revenue in 2025, growing 22%. Walmart generated $6.4 billion, growing 46%.
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Amazon and Shopify together now account for approximately 50% of U.S. e-commerce. Two models each reached maturity at roughly the same time. U.S. e-commerce has quietly organized itself around both, and the space between them is where every other player is now making its case.
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Fewer than 8,000 sellers now generate half of Amazon's estimated $300 billion in U.S. third-party GMV – roughly 68% of total U.S. sales – representing just 1.6% of the active seller base.
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