A twelve-week applied AI cohort, after the Cambridge theory.
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.
Cambridge produces some of the best academic AI work in the world. If your goal is research, stay — Trinity, the Computer Lab and the Cambridge AI labs are world-class. The Academy is the applied complement: the engineering, commercials and deployment a Cambridge CV doesn’t cover. Derby is ~2.5 hours by train (via Peterborough or Birmingham); most past Cambridge students have relocated for the twelve weeks because central Derby is materially cheaper than Cambridge.
Coding · the applied stack a Cambridge CV does not show
Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, evals, deploys, observability. Cambridge produces world-class theorists. The Academy adds the engineering Cambridge deliberately does not teach — production retrieval, agents, evals, observability and deploy pipelines on real systems. A deployed product by week twelve — the artefact that turns a Cambridge CV into an Anthropic, DeepMind or Wayve interview that lands.
Commercials · the bit no Trinity tripos covers
Cambridge teaches you to think; it does not teach you to sell. Pricing, discovery calls, a one-page pilot agreement, the first £500 invoice. A paid pilot by week six — the milestone the strongest Cambridge AI founders we know wish they had earlier.
Investment · the Cambridge + Midlands capital network
Cap table from week two, ten-slide deck, financial model, term sheets line by line. Cambridge Innovation Capital, Amadeus Capital, Cambridge Angels, ARM’s alumni network, Parkwalk Advisors, IQ Capital, Martlet plus the Midlands and London pre-seed graph (Plural, Local Globe, Concrete VC, Pi Labs, EF). A live investor pipeline by demo day.
Common questions.
Is the Academy a substitute for a Cambridge AI MPhil or PhD?
Not for the kind of person who wants research depth. Cambridge research programmes are excellent at what they do. The Academy is the applied complement — many strong AI engineers do both at different points in their career.
I am doing my Bachelor’s at Cambridge. Should I drop out?
Almost never. The Academy fits well on a year between Bachelor’s and Master’s, as a sandwich year, or in the summer after final exams. Several past students have done exactly that.
How long is the commute from Cambridge to Derby?
Around two and a half hours by train (changing in Peterborough or Birmingham). Not realistic to commute daily. Most past Cambridge students have relocated for the twelve weeks — central Derby is materially cheaper than Cambridge.
Will I learn deep ML theory at the Academy?
Less than at Cambridge — that is the honest trade. The Academy teaches you to engineer, ship and sell AI systems on top of frontier models. The underlying ML theory you bring is a feature; the Academy adds the rest.
Where do Cambridge alumni typically go after the Academy?
Hybrid roles — AI engineering at well-funded startups, applied research positions at AI-native companies that need the engineering layer, or founder roles where the academic depth becomes a competitive advantage. The Academy bridges the academic-to-applied gap that most Cambridge graduates have to figure out on their own.
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 and where you are with your studies or work in Cambridge. James and Louis read every application personally and reply inside the week.
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