By Hamza Faisal
Two former leaders of the US Justice Department's antitrust division have launched an artificial intelligence startup built for the other side of the courtroom. Jonathan Kanter and Doha Mekki unveiled FluxCap on October 28, a legal technology platform designed to help plaintiffs' lawyers and government enforcers identify, develop and litigate complex cases at scale — work that usually demands teams and budgets only the largest firms can afford.
Kanter led the antitrust division under President Joe Biden, while Mekki served as its acting head and also worked in the division under Presidents Trump and Obama. The pair say they founded FluxCap to close a capacity gap they saw firsthand in government: meritorious cases that never get brought because the time, expense and resources required to investigate and litigate them are simply too great. Kanter estimates his Justice Department team was able to pursue only about 10 percent of the cases it believed were worth bringing.
Built for the cases that never get filed
"What kept us up at night at the Department of Justice were not the cases we brought, but the cases we didn't have the chance to bring," Kanter said. "The plaintiffs' space and government space are highly underserved," he added, arguing that most legal AI is built for defence firms — "a very crowded market" — while smaller plaintiffs' teams face opponents with far deeper resources.
FluxCap is organised like a specialist law firm rather than a general-purpose chatbot: it concentrates on deep expertise in one practice area at a time, beginning with antitrust, with other specialties planned. Every fact, citation and conclusion the system produces is open to review and audit, the company says.
Three engines for facts, law and strategy
The platform runs on three connected engines. Almanac organises legal precedents; the FluxFacts engine ties claims to evidence; and Vision Manager helps lawyers refine their strategy. Together they support work from research and complaint drafting through discovery and deposition preparation, handling tasks — such as reviewing hundreds of documents — that could take a team of lawyers days or weeks.
The engineering team is led by chief technology officer Marshall Seid, a former Palantir tech lead, and includes several Palantir alumni alongside at least four other former Justice Department antitrust officials. FluxCap launched with $6.4 million in seed funding from investors including Y Combinator, Bloomberg Beta, Burford Capital, Omidyar Network, Deep Work Capital and Coalition Operators. Its first customers include boutique law firm Kressin Powers, and the company says it is in procurement discussions with the offices of two state attorneys general and a large municipality.
A crowded legal-AI market
FluxCap enters a fast-growing market. Funding for legal technology startups rose nearly 150 percent from 2024 to 2025, reaching $3.2 billion, according to PitchBook. Established players include Harvey, which raised $550 million at a $15.5 billion valuation in September, and Legora, which raised $550 million at an $8.8 billion valuation in October, while Google, Anthropic and OpenAI have all introduced legal tools.
Last month, plaintiffs' firm Morgan & Morgan said it would invest at least $1 billion in AI and technology over the next decade and begin marketing its own platform to other firms next year. FluxCap's pitch is narrower: not a general legal assistant, but infrastructure for plaintiffs and public enforcers taking on well-resourced opponents. Its promised efficiency gains have yet to be independently demonstrated in court — the test now is whether smaller teams using it can actually bring cases that previously never made it past the intake meeting.
