Today you have to hand your data over to whoever wants to do something with it. Freehold reverses that. Your data stays where it is, the question travels to it, the computation happens on the spot, and only the answer leaves. That answer carries a signed label recording where it came from, what it may be used for, and how long it stays valid. Two parties can therefore reach a shared answer on data they will never hand each other.
Written to be quoted. Shorter version: the data stays, the question travels to the data, and only the answer goes out.
The problem
People have been talking about a market for data for twenty years, and that market does not exist. Not because something is going wrong, but because data lacks the property that makes a price come about: a copy costs nothing and cannot be told apart from the original, so there is never a shortage and therefore never a price.
Everyone knows the consequence. You pay for services with your data, you get nothing measurable back, and once it leaves it acquires a second and a third life at parties you have never seen. Companies have the mirror image of the same problem: they need each other's data to answer a question, and they cannot hand it over.
The working of the network
A network on which a question travels to the data rather than the other way round. At a participant, at home or in a business, there is a connection point, and a Hub runs on it. Compare it with the fuse box: it hangs there, you do not notice it, and it determines what comes in.
- The data stays put. It does not leave the place where it sits, at any moment.
- Only validated computations may run. Every computation is tested and admitted beforehand and appears on a list. If it is not on the list, it runs nowhere.
- The answer leaves with a label. Provenance, permitted use and a validity period, all three under a single signature, so that no part can be detached.
- The recipient checks before it acts. If the signature does not verify, or the period has expired, the action does not begin.
- The validity period follows from the kind of data. For a reading that refreshes every quarter of an hour, it runs until the next reading. There is no fixed upper bound for everything.
The comparison that works fastest
The electricity grid. A hundred years ago a line was laid and one socket became the standard, and after that thousands of other people built appliances for it. The grid operator never made a washing machine and is paid all the same for every kilowatt hour that passes through.
Freehold wants to be that layer for data. And as with solar panels: you do not give away your roof, you supply what it produces. The panels stay on the roof, the harvest goes to market.
Three examples
Examples of the shape, and not the full scope.
- Three banks together establish whether a payment is suspicious, without any one of them seeing another's customer file.
- A hospital and a research group reach an answer about a treatment while the patient records never leave the hospital.
- A machine builder warns an owner that servicing is due without taking possession of that factory's production data.
The boundaries of the proposition
- Not a data marketplace and not a data broker. No data is bought or sold.
- Not a repository. Freehold collects no data and stores none.
- Not a replacement for a record. The retention obligations of whoever holds the data are untouched.
- Not a device manufacturer. The hardware comes from a partner, see below.
The device and the partner
The device the Hub will run on exists as a working prototype, under the name Semek. It sits next to the router and today checks photos, videos and text without anything leaving the home. Semek is a working prototype by Aaltra, a Belgian technology company, in collaboration with Freehold. More at semek.ai.
The state of play
Freehold Works is a company being incorporated. Incorporation is planned for September 2026. Until then the company does not exist in law and the four founders act in their own names. Anyone writing about Freehold is therefore writing about an initiative being incorporated and not about an existing business.
- The patent has been applied for. European patent application 26202295.7, titled Improved authentication for processing requests, was filed on 1 September 2026, with fifteen claims and four inventors. The invention is therefore European patent pending. The application was drafted and filed by the patent firm Patentales in Ghent.
- The intellectual property is held by the four founders jointly, each in equal part, and is licensed to the company with an undertaking to contribute it later at a value set by an independent third party.
- No funding round has closed and there are no figures to disclose.
The founders
Ruben Verborgh, Chief Executive Hallucinator, carries the technical architecture. He is the author of the book manuscript The Insight Economy, in preparation with Wiley.
Together with three co-inventors and co-founders he holds the intellectual property, each in equal part. Requests to speak to any of them go through the contact address below.
Facts at a glance
| Name | Freehold, the brand. Freehold Works, the company being incorporated. |
|---|---|
| What it is | A network on which data stays put and only answers leave. |
| Baseline | Insights, never data. |
| Founders | Ruben Verborgh and three co-inventors and co-founders, in equal parts. |
| Patent | European application 26202295.7, filed 1 September 2026, fifteen claims, four inventors. European patent pending. |
| Hardware partner | Aaltra, with the Semek prototype. |
| Website | freehold.works |
| Contact | hello@freehold.works |
Assets and contact
The Dutch version of this page is at Informatie voor de pers.
For logos, high resolution imagery or an interview, write to hello@freehold.works.
About Freehold Works
Freehold Works is a company being incorporated that builds a network on which data stays where it is. A question travels to the data, the computation happens on the spot, and only the answer leaves, carrying a signed label recording provenance, permitted use and validity period. The underlying technology is the subject of a European patent application filed on 1 September 2026.