A twelve-week AI cohort worth the flight from Belfast.
Moonlabs is the operator-led AI Academy in Derby. We run three live companies — Homemove, home.co.uk and homedata.co.uk — and we teach twelve students per cohort to ship a real AI product, sell it to a real customer, and raise on it. Three pillars: Coding, Commercials, Investment. Twelve weeks. £6,000.
Moonlabs is what we are. Two operators — James Freestone and Louis O’Connell-Bristow — who run Homemove, home.co.uk and homedata.co.uk, have raised £5m+ for their own companies, and have been AI-native since the week ChatGPT shipped.
The Academy is what we do. A twelve-week, in-person, twelve-student cohort in Derby. You build a real AI product. You sign a paid pilot. You write a deck and a financial model. You leave with a deployed system, a paying customer reference and a live investor pipeline. Coding, Commercials, Investment — the three pillars taught in equal weight every week.
Northern Ireland has Queen’s, Ulster, and a serious software scene — and not yet an operator-led AI bootcamp of its own. Derby is a flight plus a train: 4-5 hours door to door, fine for a twelve-week relocation, far cheaper than central Belfast for the duration. Past students from Belfast have stayed Monday-Friday in central Derby and flown home weekends.
Coding · the stack Belfast employers are hiring for
Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, evals, deploys, observability. Belfast hosts Citi’s largest non-US tech hub (3,000+ engineers), Allstate’s European centre, FinTrU, Liberty IT, Kainos, PwC’s Belfast cyber centre, Rapid7 and a cyber-security cluster bigger than most UK regions — all hiring AI engineers. A deployed product by week twelve on your CV before any Queen’s or Ulster CS finalist has graduated.
Commercials · sell into the Northern Ireland SMB market
Belfast sits at the centre of an NI SMB market with around 15,000 businesses spending on tools an AI agent could replace — and a price ceiling materially lower than the rest of the UK, which means pilots close fast. Pricing, discovery, a one-page pilot agreement, the first £500 invoice. A paid pilot by week six.
Investment · the Belfast capital network
Cap table from week two, ten-slide deck, financial model, term sheets line by line. Invest NI, Techstart Ventures, the Halo Business Angel Network, Co-Fund NI, Ignite NI, plus the all-island Atlantic Bridge and Furthr funds. A live investor pipeline by demo day — with warm introductions across both sides of the border.
Common questions.
How long is the journey from Belfast to Derby?
Around four to five hours door to door: flight to East Midlands or Birmingham (1h-1h20), then train to Derby (30 minutes). Realistic for weekly travel, not daily. Most past Northern-Irish students have stayed in central Derby for the twelve weeks.
What about accommodation in Derby?
We can introduce you to short-term central Derby accommodation at sensible rates — cheaper than Belfast city centre. Several past students from outside the Midlands have done exactly this.
I am at QUB / Ulster. Can I fit this around my degree?
The Academy is full-time during the twelve weeks. Best fits are sandwich-year placements, gap years, or the summer between final exams and the next academic year.
How does this compare to AI courses in Dublin?
Dublin has some good academic AI options at Trinity and UCD; the in-person operator-led applied-bootcamp space is thinner there too. The Academy is a different shape from any of those — less theory, more shipping. We have had Republic of Ireland students fly in for the cohort.
What about Derry, Lisburn, Armagh, the rest of Northern Ireland?
All workable via Belfast International or Belfast City. The flight is the same length from anywhere on the island; the question is the airport drive on either end.
More Academy entry points.
The Academy is one course with many doors. Each of these pages is a different entry point into the same twelve weeks.
Build it. Sell it. Raise on it. In twelve weeks.
Tell us what you would build, where you are based in Northern Ireland, and whether a twelve-week stay in Derby is realistic. James and Louis read every application personally and reply inside the week.
© 2026 Moonlabs Incubator. All rights reserved.