Jonathan Kanter, who stepped down as head of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division in 2024, has launched FluxCap, a startup selling AI-based legal research and analysis tools, according to The Verge. Co-founded with former acting Antitrust Division chief Doha Mekki, the company employs former DOJ staffers and former Palantir engineers.
FluxCap’s platform is designed to help plaintiffs build cases against large companies, initially focusing on antitrust litigation with plans to expand into other practice areas. Built on proprietary technology and existing large language models, the tool analyzes legal frameworks and facts to identify potential weaknesses in attorneys’ arguments and searches discovery materials for evidence of anticompetitive behavior.
“This, to me, it’s existential,” Kanter told The Verge. “Because it’s the only way that enforcement is going to work in the long term, is if technology and other tools are able to help scarce resources go significantly further than they can today.”
Kanter said developing the tool to find relevant evidence in context was particularly challenging, as executives rarely explicitly acknowledge monopolistic behavior. The platform aims to identify signals in communications where surrounding context gives specific meaning to otherwise ambiguous messages.