Picterra Signs Memorandum With Brazil's INPA on Amazon Agroforestry and Satellite Analysis

Picterra has signed a memorandum of understanding with Brazil's Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (INPA), the international research institute on the Amazon, to collaborate on agroforestry, biodiversity research and plot-level satellite analysis in the Brazilian Amazon. startupticker.ch reported the agreement on November 3, 2026.

What the INPA Memorandum Covers

Picterra Chief Marketing Officer Dan Rushton told startupticker.ch that the document establishes a framework and marks a first step in the collaboration. "The first reason is scientific," he said. "INPA is the reference institution for Amazonian research, and one of the first areas we will explore together is agroforestry, on crops such as cupuaçu, açaí, and tucumã."

Rushton said agroforestry systems are among the hardest land uses to monitor from satellite because they mix species, canopy layers and harvest cycles on plots that are often small and irregular. Working with researchers who understand those systems on the ground is how Picterra's models get better at reading them, according to the company.

The commercial rationale is indirect. Brazil sits in the supply base of most of the commodities Picterra's customers buy, and the company said questions about deforestation, compliance, yield risk and sourcing practices are hardest to answer precisely in these landscapes. Improving what Picterra can see there improves what it can offer everywhere, Rushton said.

Picterra began as a platform that lets people build and run their own detection models on satellite imagery. The company said it has since become a commodity intelligence company, with that work built into Insights Hub, its GeoAI platform for commodity supply chains. The platform replaces country-level approximations with plot-level intelligence across farms, fields and forests, covering yield risk, regulatory compliance and sustainability practices, with an agentic reasoning layer that traces each insight back to its plot.

Picterra's Funding and Customer Records

According to akta.pro company records, Picterra launched Insights Hub in 2024 alongside structured solution verticals covering EU Deforestation Regulation compliance, regenerative agriculture, mining surface intelligence, and forestry and carbon. The same records show a $6.5 million Series A in April 2022 led by VI Partners and ACE & Company, and an Innosuisse grant in October 2024 under the Swiss Accelerator program to develop near-real-time supply chain monitoring for the soft commodity sector.

Picterra and Geneva commodity merchant Walter Matter recently won the Innovative Partnership Award at the Commodities Innovation Awards for a joint project on deforestation risk management under the EU Deforestation Regulation. Walter Matter has monitored more than 500,000 plots across 26 countries, covering 160 suppliers and over 1,000 EUDR-verified shipments, according to the company.

EU Deforestation Rules Take Effect in December 2026

The EU Deforestation Regulation applies to large and medium operators from December 30, 2026, which the company said turns supply chain visibility from a reporting exercise into a condition of market access. Picterra is headquartered in Lausanne and has a team of over 20 people.