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Why Data Is Illiquid—and How CFOs and Private Equity Can Unlock Future Monetization

This final article in our four-part series brings our exploration of the thesis that intangible data is the next rising asset class to its conclusion. We’ve examined why data lacks standardized valuation, why ownership is complex, and how data depreciates over time. Now, we turn to the last frontier: liquidity. For CFOs and private equity leaders, the inability to easily trade or monetize data assets limits flexibility, reduces optionality, and undercuts potential value creation. But the path to liquidity is emerging—and firms that act early will be best positioned to capitalize.

In today’s markets, data remains largely illiquid—traded infrequently, priced inconsistently, and governed by bespoke agreements.

✅ No centralized exchanges for verified, tradable data
✅ Transactions are highly negotiated, legally complex, and compliance-intensive
✅ Buyer-seller matchmaking is inefficient, limiting price discovery and scalability

For CFOs and private equity leaders, this illiquidity suppresses data’s financial utility—reducing its contribution to enterprise value, impeding monetization strategies, and limiting its use as a financing lever.

Why does this matter?
✅ Illiquidity reduces optionality in M&A, financing, or spinout strategies
✅ Inability to trade data constrains revenue diversification
✅ Low market liquidity leads to deep valuation discounts for intangible data assets

🚀 Market Traction: Platforms Are Emerging—but Gaps Remain
The market isn’t standing still. A wave of startups and platforms are actively working to build infrastructure for data liquidity, signaling early but uneven traction:

• Datarade is creating a decentralized marketplace where buyers can discover and license third-party data products across categories like geospatial, financial, and consumer behavior.

• Snowflake’s Data Marketplace enables customers to share, monetize, and access live data within a governed cloud environment—integrated with analytics workflows.

• Databricks Marketplace connects data providers with consumers in AI/ML-driven pipelines, aiming to simplify access to structured and unstructured data assets.

• LiveRamp, Dawex, and Narrative I/O have launched data exchange platforms targeting privacy-safe, permissioned data collaboration between enterprises.

👉 These platforms represent early steps toward standardization, discoverability, and transactional infrastructure.

But challenges remain:
✅ Data products remain heterogeneous in quality, format, and licensing terms
✅ Trust and verification protocols are immature and fragmented
✅ Legal and regulatory differences across jurisdictions hinder cross-border data liquidity

🕰️ A Lesson from History: Carbon Markets’ Journey to Liquidity
When carbon credits emerged in the 1990s, the ecosystem faced similar hurdles: inconsistent standards, variable credit quality, opaque price discovery. It wasn’t until global frameworks (Kyoto, Paris), third-party verification, and regulated exchanges matured that carbon credits achieved market liquidity.

👉 What we learned: Liquidity follows standardization, verification, and institutional infrastructure—not precedes it.

💡 Why Data Is More Complex—and More Promising
Unlike carbon credits, data is infinitely replicable, context-dependent, and governed by privacy laws. Its value depends not just on quantity, but provenance, compliance, and exclusivity—complicating efforts to build liquid markets.

But the momentum is building. Every new data exchange, marketplace, and interoperable licensing protocol brings us closer to scalable, liquid data markets.

✅ For CFOs and private equity leaders, the implications are clear:
👉 Data-rich firms that standardize, document, and govern their data assets today will be best positioned to access liquidity as the infrastructure matures.
👉 Early preparation enables optionality: license data, securitize it, collateralize it, or package it in spinouts.

At Gulp Data, we help companies prepare their data assets for emerging marketplaces—building the quality, documentation, and governance foundations necessary for eventual liquidity.

✨ Liquidity isn’t inevitable—it’s engineered. And the firms preparing now will capitalize first.

This concludes our four-part series on data as the next rising asset class. We hope these insights help you navigate the evolving landscape of intangible value.

About Gulp Data
Gulp Data is a pioneering data valuation and collateralization platform that helps businesses unlock the financial potential of their data. By leveraging market comps, machine intelligence, and proprietary methodologies, Gulp Data enables companies to assess and utilize data as a strategic asset in transactions, lending, and corporate finance.

For media inquiries, please contact: Maxine Lorenzo. [email protected]. +1 (360) 215-5317.

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