About Rootz Corp
The Company Behind FreightProof
Rootz Corp builds the proof-and-ownership layer for the AI era — technology that proves where data comes from and binds ownership to it at the moment of creation. FreightProof is our first product for the freight industry: cryptographic proof of carrier vetting, built the day the Supreme Court ruled brokers can be sued.
We are a Delaware C-corp based in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. We hold multiple patents in trusted computing, data security, digital identity, and verified AI.
The Team
Steven Sprague — Founder & CEO
Steven Sprague is one of the principal industry evangelists for the application of trusted computing, privacy, and usable digital identity. He has a strong technical foundation in the principles, capabilities, and business models of building trust into everyday computing, and is skilled at translating these concepts into layman's terms.
Steven is the Founder and CEO of Rootz Corp, where he is building the proof-and-ownership layer for the AI era — technology that proves where data and AI output come from and binds ownership to it at the moment of creation, turning data into a provable, owned asset. He is also a co-founder of Orate Corp (2024) and serves as an advisor to Naoris Protocol and Netcapital.
Previously, Steven was President and CEO of Wave Systems Corp., a NASDAQ company, which he took from delisting in 1997 to over a $2 billion valuation in 2000 while leading the industry in OEM and enterprise trusted-computing software. He went on to form Rivetz Corp in 2013, an early participant in blockchain technologies, developing early models for utility-token security and services.
Steven is one of the original founders of the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), the industry standards body behind the TPM chip present in over a billion PCs. He holds dozens of patents in trusted computing, data security, digital identity, and verified AI, and graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. in mechanical engineering.
Steven carries a CDL and put 20,000 miles on his truck this year hauling his family's horses up and down I-95.
Contact: steven@sprague.com
Michael Sprague — Co-Founder & CTO
Michael Sprague is the architect and primary builder of the entire Rootz platform infrastructure. In one year he designed and built: the Data Wallet, blockchain architecture, cross-platform messaging, the Rootz dashboard, the Epistery platform, a 32-tool MCP server, and the archive system that powers all Rootz services.
Michael's technical focus spans post-quantum cryptography, multi-tenant plugin runtimes, OAuth 2.1 authentication, ECDSA bot-auth, and smart contract architecture. He built the Harness — Rootz's custom multisite routing and SSL management system — and the infrastructure powering the Rootz data network across freight, automotive, food, real estate, and political intelligence.
Michael is co-inventor on multiple patents with Steven, including the allowed patent for "System to Assure a Response from an Identified, Measured and Verified AI" (US 18/900,335) — the core technology behind FreightProof's signed, verified data pipeline.
Contact: michael@sprague.com
Rich Wheeless — CFO
Rich Wheeless brings deep experience in public-company finance, equity crowdfunding, and business development to Rootz. He previously served as CEO of Netcapital (OTC: NCPL), an equity crowdfunding platform, giving him inside knowledge of capital formation and regulatory compliance. Before that, he served as early CFO at Rivetz Corp.
At Rootz, Rich manages financial operations and leads business development relationships with enterprise customers and channel partners across freight, food, and government sectors. He brings an extensive network of relationships in regulated industries where data provenance and compliance create competitive advantage.
Contact: richw@rootz.global
Why We Built FreightProof
On May 14, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II that freight brokers can be sued for negligent carrier selection. That morning, 28,000 brokers woke up to a new legal reality: every dispatch is now a potential liability event.
We had the technology. Steven spent 25 years building trusted computing infrastructure — the same cryptographic proof systems that protect classified government data. Michael had already built a signed data pipeline capable of capturing, hashing, and attesting data at the moment of creation.
We launched FreightProof the day of the ruling. Not because we planned to. Because we could.
The freight industry doesn't need another dashboard. It needs evidence. Evidence that anyone can verify — including opposing counsel — without trusting the platform that created it. That's what SHA-256 hashing does. That's what we do.
The Rootz Data Network
FreightProof is part of the Rootz data network — a family of services that make government and public data AI-native, signed, and independently verifiable:
Every service in the network signs its data at capture, proves origin, and serves it in AI-native formats (MCP, JSON-LD, structured APIs). No service in the network sells user data.
Rootz Corp · Pittsfield, MA · rootz.global · steven@sprague.com