Exporting freeform gradients as svg, image embedded

A straightforward question about a problem I've recently ran into.

I have a design with some freeform gradients in it, I want to export it as svg. Both with save as and asset export, the resulting svg has actually a png image embedded in it. If I open the svg with notepad I see a data asset, and by the way I saw Illustrator exporting the png file which then became a svg.

Is there any way to obtain a code-only svg when working with freeform gradients? Any work around?

Thank you