ROC, the Denver-based biometrics and video analytics developer, has agreed to acquire Zuccaro Technical Consulting, a digital forensics developer that provides specialized software engineering to federal government customers. The deal would fold ZTC’s forensics work into ROC Evidence, the company’s digital evidence management product, as ROC tries to build out an end-to-end investigative platform for public safety and federal agencies.
Under the definitive agreement, effective June 23 and expected to close in the third quarter of 2026 subject to customary conditions, ROC will pay 500,000 dollars in upfront cash and about 2.5 million dollars in restricted common stock, plus a performance-based earn-out. ZTC employees would receive restricted stock units, and ZTC would operate as a wholly owned subsidiary. ROC said the structure is meant to limit shareholder dilution while adding revenue from ZTC’s multi-year contracts.
The appeal for ROC is the combination of ZTC’s forensics tools, its workforce of specialized engineers, and its active federal contracts. ROC said that, subject to government approvals, it expects to draw on those contracts and ZTC’s technical team to pursue additional programs across its government and public-safety base. ZTC’s technology handles the ingestion, processing, review, and management of large-scale digital evidence, including legal process returns, mobile device extractions, and multimedia files. ROC said ZTC’s engineers have spent more than two decades sharpening those capabilities in operational settings rather than building off-the-shelf products.
ROC framed the move as a way to add scale in what it described as a 9.4 billion dollar digital evidence and forensics market. The company, headquartered in Denver with additional hubs in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Morgantown, West Virginia, describes its unified platform as combining biometrics, video analytics, and mission intelligence for defense, public safety, and commercial customers. The acquisition comes a few months after Rank One Computing closed a 24 million dollar IPO and began trading on the Nasdaq.
“With the addition of ZTC, we have taken a highly strategic, financially disciplined, and transformative step in the expansion of ROC Evidence and our broader Vision AI platform,” said B. Scott Swann, CEO of ROC. Tony Zuccaro, founder of ZTC, said joining ROC would let the company connect digital evidence investigations with ROC’s ABIS biometric system of record and its ROC Watch video analytics, and help agencies modernize evidence workflows while keeping data secure through investigation and trial.
Sources: ROC
–
By Cass Kennedy
