When Jonathan Kanter stepped down as head of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division in 2024, he set out to keep fighting to dismantle illegal monopolies. But this time, he’s continuing the fight in the private sector, and with a perhaps unexpected tool: AI.
Alongside former acting Antitrust Division chief Doha Mekki, Kanter recently launched a new tech startup, FluxCap. The team is stacked with former DOJ staffers and former Palantir engineers, and it’s selling an AI-based legal research and analysis tool that helps plaintiffs build and strengthen cases against the kinds of well-heeled companies Kanter and Mekki took on at the Antitrust Division. FluxCap is launching with a focus on antitrust cases, but it plans to expand into other practice areas as well.
Kanter imagines FluxCap as a “force multiplier” for antitrust watchdogs taking on powerful opponents in Big Tech and elsewhere.
“This, to me, it’s existential”
“This, to me, it’s existential,” he tells The Verge in an interview. “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.”
FluxCap’s platform,
