TellusLabs

Mapping the World's Food Supply in Real Time

Agriculture is the world's oldest industry and one of its least observable. Crop yields drive commodity markets, food security policy, and farm-level decisions but were only estimated. The methods to estimate yields are limited to sparse ground surveys which leave traders, insurers, governments, and growers to operate on lagging, incomplete, inaccurate information about the most important input in the food system.

Founded in 2016, TellusLabs recognized that decades of satellite imagery combined with machine learning could make global food supply legible in real time. The company built a living map of the world's croplands—tracing field boundaries, crop types, planting and harvest dates, and crop performance from space. Its flagship product Kernel used satellite observation with weather data, historical records, and predictive algorithms to monitor crop progress daily and forecast yields well before harvest—repeatedly beating traditional estimates and serving commodity traders, insurers, and governments.

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Exit Journey

TellusLabs' geospatial engine proved its value through Indigo Research Partners including analysis across more than 40,000 fields. In December 2018, TellusLabs was acquired by Indigo AG to power data-driven agronomic recommendations.

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