Liberbyte

Liberbyte is on a mission to democratize data exchange – setting a new standard for sharing, exchanging, managing, and monetizing data on a global scale. Liberbyte’s bytEM is a decentralized software solution that provides transparent and controlled access to a global data exchange network, and enables users to create data products and services. 

The Challenge

The data landscape is huge, complex and rapidly evolving, from mounting regulations like the Digital Act, to the sheer amount of data that is produced every day. In fact, Edge Delta estimates that each year, about 120 zettabytes of data are created worldwide. The rise of AI and LLMs have also created new challenges for individuals and organizations who need fine-grain secure control over their data, both for management and monetization.   

According to research from Global Data, The global data and analytics market was valued at US$ 112.05 billion in 2023 and is predicted to reach US$ 189.98 billion by 2028, with the cumulative revenue generation for data and analytics providers estimated at US$ 891.38 billion for 2023-2028.

“A lot of data published on the internet has been commercialized, for instance, by search engine companies, but what has happened in the recent months and years is that a lot of that data has been fed into large language models and hence monetized as AI-based solutions. The parties who published the data are mostly getting nothing in return, but the organizations reading the data (for free) are commercializing it.”

Tero Salomaa, Founder at Liberbyte

Democratizing Data 

The EU Data Act comes into force in the European Union on September 12, 2025, with the aim of creating a fairer and more competitive data economy by improving data access and use, particularly for industrial data. 

“This act means that if you own a vacuum robot, for example, the data from that device doesn’t belong to the manufacturer but to you as a device owner. You now have access to data which you could potentially commercialize, which means there’s a need for technology that allows you to put that data into the market and to allow that to be monetized.”

Tero Salomaa, Founder at Liberbyte

Liberbyte created bytEM to democratize data, giving back control to organizations and individuals to manage, exchange, and monetize data as an asset in a decentralized fashion. Online, for example, bytEM can provide a control layer to the front of organizations’ websites and algorithms or agents reading it, so that businesses gain the authority over how data is consumed. For individuals running devices that collect data, such as vacuum robots, bytEM enables decentralized data management – putting data and data products up for exchange.

“Ultimately if you put data or information to the market, as in, the public internet, you should be able to control who is reading it, who is consuming it, and whether you’d like to get paid for it.”

Tero Salomaa, Founder at Liberbyte

Fully-fledged data exchange platform 

Liberbyte recently deployed bytEMs as an exchange solution for the Julius Kühn Institute (JKI) in Germany. Trialling bytEM to enable data exchange, data management, and API administration, the project proved that it significantly improved JKI’s data exchange and management capabilities, while strengthening transparency and control in the handling of their research data. 

“We are helping researchers to manage their data, but also allowing research communities to build exchanges of data.”

Tero Salomaa, Founder at Liberbyte

Running in the cloud 

bytEM is a cloud-based, single virtual machine/IP install for creating and managing data assets. Built on top of Matrix – an open network for secure, decentralised communication – it can run on any cloud or server solution with an IP address. Integrating bytEM to provide monetization for data directly from a smart phone, smart watch, robot, sensor or similar devices is on the roadmap for Liberbyte. 

Because of this setup, the flexibility of the underlying cloud infrastructure is hugely important. Requiring multiple development environments, highly performant, and very stable infrastructure, Liberbyte chose UpCloud to build bytEM. 

“Our servers run in Frankfurt, which are lightning fast – we get just a few milliseconds latency. UpCloud’s global data centers help us to expand and clients benefit from speed and stability across the world. Equally, we also wanted an independent, European cloud provider, so that we, and our clients, remain in charge of data security and sovereignty.”

Tero Salomaa, Founder at Liberbyte

The team has now Dockerized their VMs, so that they can be launched quickly, and plan to move to one-click launch in the future using UpCloud’s hub infrastructure.

“UpCloud is the backbone of our bytEMs. Everything has worked excellently, I don’t think there has been a single issue we have faced in six years. The user interfaces are very intuitive, and UpCloud also allows a high level of automation on the command line.”

Tero Salomaa, Founder at Liberbyte

Next Steps 

Ultimately, Liberbyte envisions a network of data exchanges and marketplaces with price on the go – the ultimate democratization of data where everybody knows what data is available globally to buy and sell from their handset. In the shorter term, the team is working on enabling data exchange and routing networks for organizations to exchange data and to create reusable and sharable data products and services.