FluxCap: Kanter's AI to Strengthen Antitrust Cases

Faced with public resources deemed insufficient to tackle large corporations, Jonathan Kanter and Doha Mekki have launched FluxCap, an AI tool dedicated to research and analysis of antitrust cases. The startup claims to provide assistance equivalent to that of several dozen people and already counts a specialized law firm among its clients.

Limited Public Resources and Persistent Imbalance Acknowledged by Kanter

The antitrust division of the Department of Justice has a budget of $245 million for fiscal year 2026 and over 400 attorneys. However, Jonathan Kanter considers it unrealistic to have the necessary resources to take on very large companies. The imbalance is even more pronounced for state attorneys general, who have pursued cases when the Trump administration was more reluctant. Earlier this year, states won a lawsuit against Live Nation that the Justice Department, under Trump, had settled, and they also filed an action to block the Paramount-Warner Media merger before a settlement, following a refusal of federal intervention. Kanter reports that a large state attorney general may only align 10 people on a case. Additionally, the division secured $45.5 million through the Technology Modernization Fund for better tools, but its team was unable to deploy them before his departure. Kanter adds that the government remains disadvantaged and needs more funding and personnel, believing that private defendants will always outpace what the public sector can produce.

Kanter and Mekki's Private Response Takes the Form of FluxCap

Jonathan Kanter and Doha Mekki created FluxCap, bringing together former agents from the Department of Justice and engineers from companies like Palantir. The company initially targets antitrust cases and plans to expand into other areas. Kanter aims to continue the fight against illegal monopolies in the private sector using AI and presents the tool as a force multiplier for practitioners facing powerful players. He describes this initiative as existential and believes that FluxCap can become a great equalizer, enabling teams to compete regardless of their size and resources.

What the Platform Does: Research, Legal Framing, and Mass Sorting

FluxCap's platform relies on proprietary technology and existing language models. It primarily focuses on research and analysis, identifying the key facts and legal framework crucial for a case's success, and spotting potential flaws in lawyers' reasoning. The tool can also sift through a large volume of discovery documents to detect signs of anticompetitive behavior, following other uses of AI in the legal sector.

Nuances Hard to Capture but Worked on Real Cases

According to Jonathan Kanter, one of the major challenges lies in identifying relevant evidence, as executives do not admit to their monopolistic position, and the meaning of a message heavily depends on context. He cites the example of the Live Nation-Ticketmaster case, where a recorded call between the CEO and a client who switched to another ticketing service was released by the government; the client claimed to have perceived an implicit threat regarding programming. The FluxCap team, composed of former government attorneys, tested the system for months on existing and hypothetical cases to verify its contribution to building strong arguments. Kanter emphasizes the difficulty of forging "basic legal tools" capable of capturing these nuances and reminds that law is not reduced to binary answers, as the challenge is to convince a body of a particular outcome.

Initial Clients and Positioning Against Existing AI Tools

The antitrust firm Kressin Powers is among the first clients, and discussions are ongoing with both public and private entities. Kanter asserts that the tool provides a capacity comparable to that of about 20 people working continuously, allowing small teams to take on large organizations. When he led the division, AI-based BLTs were tested but deemed insufficient for complex legal research; tools like ChatGPT or Harvey were seen as adequate but not nuanced enough. The idea for FluxCap dates back to when the team sought to stretch its resources in the face of significant litigation, including lawsuits against Google and monopolization actions targeting Apple and Live Nation. FluxCap aims to equip plaintiffs against companies already encountered by Kanter and Mekki and offers a dedicated search and analysis engine for this purpose.