Yes: Amazon owns Whole Foods Market outright.Amazon completed the acquisition on 28 August 2017 for about $13.2 billion in cash, net of cash acquired, according to its 2017 annual report. Whole Foods runs under its own name as a wholly owned subsidiary, and Amazon itself is a public company whose largest holder is founder Jeff Bezos (8.8%, as of 24 February 2026).
Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market on 28 August 2017 for approximately $13.2 billion ($13,176 million), net of cash acquired. Its results have been part of Amazon's accounts since that date.
02
Amazon's own owners
Amazon's 2026 proxy lists Jeff Bezos with 950,434,581 shares (8.8%), The Vanguard Group with 7.2% and BlackRock with 5.9%, out of 10,751,236,247 shares outstanding on 24 February 2026.
03
Where Whole Foods shows up
Amazon does not report Whole Foods sales on their own. Its physical stores line, which covers sales where customers select items in a store, was $21.2 billion in 2024 and $22.6 billion in 2025, out of total net sales of $716.9 billion in 2025.
What changed in 2025-26
Amazon closes its own stores, keeps Whole Foods
On 27 January 2026 Amazon said it would close its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh physical stores, converting various locations into Whole Foods Market stores, because those formats had not reached the economic model needed for large-scale expansion.
100+ new stores planned
In the same announcement Amazon said it plans to open more than 100 new Whole Foods Market stores over the next few years, and that Whole Foods has grown sales by more than 40% and reached more than 550 locations since the 2017 acquisition.
A smaller format: Daily Shop
Whole Foods Market Daily Shop is a small-format store built around grab-and-go meals, coffee and everyday essentials. It was in five locations in January 2026, and Amazon committed to five more by the end of 2026.
Fresh food in Amazon's fast delivery
Amazon added perishable groceries to Same-Day Delivery in 2025 and said in December 2025 that it reached more than 2,300 US cities and towns, with thousands of fresh items from Whole Foods Market in the selection.
Source and periodAmazon proxy, as of 24 February 2026
What it means for you
Investors: you cannot buy Whole Foods shares; exposure comes only through Amazon stock.
Suppliers: decisions on shelf space and delivery selection now link Whole Foods stores with Amazon's online grocery, so pitch both channels.
Grocers: Amazon chose to scale the brand it bought rather than the store formats it built; a trusted brand beat a new checkout technology.
Analysts: use the physical stores line as the closest proxy for Whole Foods and say that it also includes other Amazon stores.
Operators: watch Daily Shop; small urban stores double as pick-up points and fresh inventory for fast delivery.
The Business Engineer lens
Amazon bought Whole Foods for a brand, a fresh supply chain and locations near wealthy customers, and in 2026 it bet on that asset over its own store formats. The Business Engineer’s view is that physical stores now matter as nodes in a fast-delivery network, where data on demand decides what sits on each shelf.
No. In January 2026 Amazon said it would close its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores and open more than 100 new Whole Foods Market stores over the next few years.
The complete explainer, cleaned up and reformatted for mobile.
In short
Yes. Amazon has owned 100% of Whole Foods Market since 28 August 2017, when it paid about $13.2 billion in cash, net of cash acquired. Whole Foods is the core of what Amazon reports as physical stores, which sold $22.6 billion in 2025. Amazon itself is public; founder Jeff Bezos is its largest individual shareholder with 8.8%.
Correction (10 Oct 2026): an earlier version of this page gave the price as $13.7 billion and listed undated shareholder figures. Amazon’s 2017 10-K records about $13.2 billion in cash, net of cash acquired ($13,176 million); shareholdings now follow Amazon’s 2026 proxy.
How we source: figures on this page come from the company’s own filings (SEC 10-K, 10-Q, prospectus and earnings releases, or its annual report), with the period stated next to each number; outside estimates appear only labelled, with their source and date. Last refreshed October 2026. Our methodology.
Amazon reports ‘physical stores’ (Whole Foods Market, Amazon Fresh and other stores) as one line; Whole Foods’ own sales have not been disclosed separately since 2017.
Does Amazon own Whole Foods?
Yes. Amazon completed the acquisition of Whole Foods Market on 28 August 2017. Its 2017 annual report records the price as about $13.2 billion in cash, net of cash acquired ($13,176 million), of which $9.0 billion was goodwill and $1.9 billion marketing-related intangibles such as the Whole Foods brand. Amazon funded it with $16 billion of new bonds.
Whole Foods still operates under its own name from Austin, Texas, as a wholly owned subsidiary. In its first four months inside Amazon it added $5.8 billion of sales, at a small operating loss.
How big is Whole Foods inside Amazon?
Amazon no longer breaks out Whole Foods’ sales. It reports a physical stores line that includes Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh and other stores: $21.2 billion in 2024 and $22.6 billion in 2025, about 3% of Amazon’s total revenue. Whole Foods is the bulk of it.
And who owns Amazon?
Amazon is a public company. Founder Jeff Bezos is its largest individual shareholder, with about 950 million shares or 8.8% according to Amazon’s 2026 proxy statement. The rest is widely held, largely by index funds.
Whole Foods plus Amazon Fresh and other stores (Amazon earnings releases).
The Business Engineer view
Amazon bought locations, not just groceries
Structurally, Amazon paid for a network of several hundred stores in high-income urban areas with cold storage and fresh-food supply chains, things that are hard to build from scratch. Those stores became pick-up points, return points and a test bed for delivery, as well as a grocery business.
Eight years on, physical stores are still a small slice of Amazon, about 3% of revenue, and growing slowly. The question is whether Amazon’s newer grocery push, same-day perishable delivery from its own warehouses, makes the store network more valuable as a hub, or less necessary.
What to watch
Amazon’s physical stores growth in each quarterly release
Grocery delivery expansion and how it uses Whole Foods stores
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
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