Wednesday, June 3, 2026

Two health insurers just overtook GM as the highest-ranked women-led companies on the Fortune 500

GM ranks No. 23 on the 2026 Fortune 500, which means it's no longer the largest U.S. company led by a female CEO.

Jeff Kowalsky/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The 2026 edition of the Fortune 500 is out today—which means it’s time to take a look at the latest stats around women leading Fortune 500 businesses.

My colleague Sydney Lake dives into all the details in a new story for Fortune. A record 56 women lead Fortune 500 companies in 2026, 11.2% of the newest ranking of America’s largest businesses by revenue. That’s the highest share in the list’s 72-year history and the fourth consecutive year the figure has cleared double digits.

The share of Fortune 500 companies run by women has trended upward since 2020, when just 7.4% of the list was female-led. But growth was flat at 10.4% in both 2023 and 2024 before ticking up in 2025 and again this year.

That comes even after some notable exits last fall; in the span of weeks, the Fortune 500 lost multiple female CEOs, including SAIC’s Toni Townes-Whitley, Fannie Mae’s Priscilla Almodovar, and Oracle’s Safra Catz. New additions, meanwhile, include CEOs at Newmont, Textron, Murphy USA, and DTE Energy. And this count doesn’t include two incoming CEOs—Karen S. Carter at Dow (who will be one of three Black female CEOs in the Fortune 500) and Heidi O’Neill at Lululemon. Both have been named to their positions, but neither has officially started yet.

We explored many of these themes in the 2026 edition of the Fortune Most Powerful Women list, which published last week. Many—but not all!—of these Fortune 500 CEOs make that list.

What stands out to me about the Fortune 500 is movement at the top of the ranking. Last year, the highest-ranked Fortune 500 company run by a female CEO was GM, led by Mary Barra. GM was ranked at No. 18 on the 2025 Fortune 500.

This year, GM has fallen to No. 23 on the Fortune 500. That means that two companies with female CEOs now rank higher than GM on the Fortune 500. In the highest spot is Elevance Health, led by Gail Boudreaux. Elevance Health comes in at No. 18 on the Fortune 500 this year, with $199 billion in revenues. Next up was Centene, led by CEO Sarah London, which ranked No. 19 on the Fortune 500 with $195 billion in revenues. Note that both are health insurers.

But size—the metric of choice for the fairly straightforward Fortune 500—isn’t everything. (And the Fortune 500 ranks companies, while the Most Powerful Women list ranks people). Barra still came in at No. 2 on this year’s MPW list. Boudreaux stood at No. 81, and London No. 63. Both businesses have scale, but are in a sector grappling with a host of challenges.

Explore the full list of female Fortune 500 CEOs here.

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com

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