Brazil | June 15, 2026

Lately, everything is about AI. And at Web Summit Rio 2026, it was clear how much it has become embedded in conversations, industries, and ideas. But among more than 40,000 participants and hundreds of sessions, I found myself drawn to discussions where AI became part of a bigger picture, connected to people, nature, creativity, and the systems shaping our future. Here are a few insights I gathered throughout the event.

A more-than-human relation

As everything around us speeds up, a reconnection to nature is increasingly happening. During a panel on “Soil as climate infrastructure”, featuring Marc Violo (MycoStories), Francisco Jardim (SP Ventures) and Constance Malleret (The Guardian), it was striking to see perspectives on how regenerative agriculture is moving from niche to mainstream. Conventional chemical fertilizers can degrade soil health over time, and in modern agriculture, they often block the exchanges that fungi and other microorganisms naturally perform with plants. Against that backdrop, I was amazed to see a clear pull toward bioprospection, novel formulations, and biological products gaining real penetration in the Brazilian market.

The timing matters. With the global geopolitical scenario pushing up the price of chemical fertilizers, which Brazil imports in huge volumes, the momentum for market adoption of nature-based solutions has been stronger and stronger. Brazil’s tropical biodiversity also gives it a deeper strength, and its regulatory speed is a genuine advantage: launching a biological here can take around nine months, while in Europe the same process can stretch to three to five years. That speed is part of why large farms are already adopting biologicals at scale.

What’s emerging, in the end, is less a break with the past than a return to it: a reconnection to traditional agricultural knowledge — moving away from monocultures and toward working with soil health and microorganisms to retain water, build drought resistance, and store more carbon in the ground. At its core, it is a shift toward circularity, interconnectedness, and a more integrated relationship with natural systems.

A standing forest

That Brazil holds a generational opportunity in carbon removal is, by now, a consensus. The open question is whether the market will mature fast enough to meet it. That’s what stayed with me after listening to Peter Fernandez (Mombak). Since the Paris Agreement in 2015, there has been a sustained push toward a single, global carbon-credit market, and yet the reality remains a highly fragmented one.

The payoff, if the rules and export licenses come together, is enormous: a study by WayCarbon and ICC Brasil estimates that Brazil’s carbon market could eventually be worth roughly twice the value of the country’s beef exports, while generating several times more jobs per hectare than cattle ranching. The promise is clear, the infrastructure to deliver it is still being built. It’s a reminder that technology is not the hardest part. The real work is building markets that truly reward nature and the people who protect it. Carbon credits may be the first large-scale mechanism, but they point to a broader future: one in which standing forests are valued not for what can be extracted from them, but for the ecosystem and the climate resilience they create.

An identity in motion

Big Brazilian brands such as Granado, Farm Rio, and Havaianas are winning over international audiences. However, what resonates abroad is less a product and more an energy: Brazil is increasingly perceived as a state of spirit, as Brazilians are often described as welcoming, engaging, and vibrant in the way they relate to one another. This idea was at the heart of the discussion shared by Liel Miranda (Alpargatas), Sissi Freeman (Granado) and Fabio Barreto (Farm Rio).

The challenge is that long-standing stereotypes still need to be disrupted. Brazilian identity is anything but fixed; as it reflects a plural and constantly changing culture shaped by a historical tapestry of Indigenous roots, African heritage, European influences, and Japanese and other immigrant communities that have contributed to the country’s diversity. And the appeal runs both ways: the same spirit that carries Brazilian brands outward also makes Brazil one of the world’s most dynamic consumer markets, with a young and deeply connected audience that is quick to embrace brands that feel embedded in the culture rather than imposed from the outside. That is where cultural awareness becomes a competitive requirement for any company looking to enter the country.

A just transition

Brazil sits on one of the world’s cleanest energy matrices and is home to one of the largest energy markets among emerging economies. Yet even a system this clean still faces important hurdles on the path toward a more efficient and reliable grid.

In this scenario, one theme that surfaced in nearly every energy keynote I attended was storage. As distributed generation expands, energy storage remains one of the sector’s main bottlenecks. Pumped-storage (reversible) hydroelectric plants were frequently cited as a promising solution, although none have yet been deployed at scale in Brazil.

While there is still much to be solved, there is also a clear appetite to do so. Public investment is beginning to follow: FINEP and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI), for instance, recently allocated R$300 million (CHF 47 million) to priority areas including energy storage, low-carbon technologies, biomass, biogas, and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Significant gaps remain, but incentives are growing stronger.

Beyond the technical agenda, however, lies a broader challenge: a clean grid is not automatically a fair one. Despite the country’s high share of renewables, per-capita energy consumption remains relatively low, which reflects inequalities in access, affordability, and economic opportunity. As Roberta Mendes (Petrobras) highlighted during one of the keynotes, the social dimension to energy cannot be left out of the equation.

That was the throughline of my week. Across conversations on soil, carbon, brands, and energy, the ideas that stayed with me most were those that viewed technology as a social construct—shaped not only by innovation itself, but by how we choose to relate to nature, non-human beings, and one another. I leave Web Summit Rio reflecting on the structures of knowledge that guide our decisions, and on how we can continue reshaping them in ways that are meaningful for both the planet and the people who inhabit it.

What were your insights from Web Summit Rio 2026?

Isabela Temístocles, Swissnex in Brazil