In this September 11, 2025 article, Etienne Brisson, “founder” of the Human Line Project, Inc. explains his role.
What’s the Business Model?
That’s a lot of money. So how does the Human Line Project, Inc plan to recoup those costs and profit? Brisson is an entrepreneur after all, not a community organizer. But the Human Line Project hasn’t disclosed a business plan and they don’t sell any products.
For Brisson, the stakes and urgency couldn’t be much higher. “We need to get it as big as possible so that we can keep up pace with AI,” he said of The Human Line with a tech founder-inflected insouciance. “If you do something good, the money will follow.“
Is Brisson living in fantasy land? Or is someone hiding the real financial incentives and players?
Examining the articles of incorporation gives us quite a few clues. Brisson described his work in the press as being a volunteer at a “small-ish” organization, but this document reflects a complex investor ready preferred share structure with no indication of products, services, or revenue baked into its restrictions or other provisions. A small organization doesn’t need nine share classes with super-voting shares and two directors each hiding behind holding companies. That structure does fit the profile of litigation financing.
The Basic Litigation Finance Model
Litigation finance is an established industry. Third party investors fund lawsuits in exchange for a percentage of the settlement. It’s legal, only regulated in some jurisdictions with little requirements for transparency, and growing fast. The Human Line Project’s structure maps onto it almost perfectly.
How Money is Raised
This isn’t a product for the average investor.
- Dedicated litigation finance funds like Burford Capital, Omni Bridgeway, or Bentham IMF — these are institutional players who already understand the asset class
- Impact investors who are attracted to the AI accountability narrative
- High net worth individuals who want exposure to a potentially massive settlement pool with a feel-good story attached
Example of Potential Investment Pitch
- We have a pipeline of X hundred verified plaintiffs
- We have a relationship with lead counsel
- We have academic and media credibility
- OpenAI is heading toward IPO and needs clean books
- Invest now through our preferred shares, get prime rate plus 2% plus upside
Complex Share Structure for Multiple Funding Rounds
The five tiers of preferred shares suggest they’re anticipating $500K–$5M+ across multiple rounds. Each round of investors gets their own class, with clear priority on repayment. When settlements flow in they get distributed up through the waterfall — Class I first, then H, then G and so on down.
The tiered structure also means early investors (Class I) get paid first and have security registration rights on corporate assets. That’s how litigation funders typically structure deals — senior position, secured, fixed return.
Given this complex legal arrangement, who will actually be pitching and administering these investments? Brisson?
And litigation financing isn’t illegal, so why are they hiding it?
A growing global financial practice threatens to leverage legal systems to extract profit instead of furthering justice. This business model, known as third party litigation funding (TPLF), involves investors, like hedge funds, paying legal fees and other litigation costs in exchange for a portion of any potential settlement or judgment. TPLF distorts the incentives at play in legal action and results in outcomes that are most lucrative for funders, regardless of the plaintiffs’ and defendants’ best interests.
An analysis conducted by the Swiss Re Institute classified TPLF as an “expensive and blunt tool to enable legal disputes, with potentially harmful economic and ethical consequences, particularly when used by vulnerable individuals.” The analysis found that TPLF results in more frequent, longer, and more costly legal action, with larger shares of the awards going to the funder instead of the plaintiff. Some groups, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform have argued that the lack of TPLF safeguards also allows for strategic international conflict to play out through TPLF-backed legal challenges.
U.S. lawmakers must enact commonsense safeguards that bring greatly needed transparency to the TPLF industry and prevent litigation financiers from exploiting the justice system for their own financial gain.
The Human Line Project claims to care about informed consent. Do the plaintiffs it recruits understand that money is being made off of them? Do the victims understand THEY are the product being sold?
“I was trying to do my due diligence about who was legitimate, who was not,” Jain said. “I reached back out to him and set up a meeting. He seemed sincere and willing to share his materials. That was when we really started talking, but it took a while for us to really figure out how we might collaborate,” she said.
The fruits of this collaboration came last month when the TJLP filed seven lawsuits against OpenAI in California state court…
I’m curious what Jain’s due diligence consisted of and what about Brisson’s profile or “materials” made him such a valuable partner. Did Brisson have the media connections to get so prominently placed as an expert source in nearly every major news outlet? That kind of thing doesn’t happen by accident. Some one sets those things up through their network, usually for a price.
But the bigger question revolves around how a 25 year old guy with no background in finance can become co-owner of a sophisticated corporate structure through a shell company with his 22 year old “mentee.” That math is not mathing. If Brisson owned his financial prowess and spoke honestly about the corporate structure that would be one thing, but instead he continually downplays his organization as small and non-profit and says remarkably ignorant things like, “If you do something good, the money will follow.” Is Brisson publicly misrepresenting his business acumen and strategy to the press or he is simply a naive front man for whoever is really pulling the strings? We still don’t have confirmed evidence of who was behind the original reddit account and domain purchase but Brisson’s name is on the official paperwork filed with the Canadian government in August and November of 2025.
Summary: A 25-year-old running a painting business is a well-known entrepreneurial stepping stone in Canada. It teaches sales and recruiting. The jump from that to filing corporate paperwork for a complex nine-share-class litigation finance vehicle and an established media presence as an expert is a very large leap, which suggests sophisticated advisors behind the scenes.
