A twelve-week AI cohort, two minutes from Derby station.
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.
Derby is where Rolls-Royce, Toyota and a quietly serious AI engineering scene live — and it is where we chose to base Moonlabs. Two minutes from the station, an hour from London, materially cheaper than the capital, and reachable from across the Midlands in under an hour: Nottingham (25 min), Loughborough (20 min), Leicester (35 min), Birmingham (1h), Sheffield (1h). Easier than commuting across London.
Coding · the stack Derby employers are hiring for
Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, evals, deploys, observability. Derby hosts Rolls-Royce’s global HQ, Toyota Manufacturing UK, Bombardier, the Government’s East Midlands Freeport, the Derby Innovation Centre and a quietly serious AI engineering cluster — plus the home offices of Homemove, home.co.uk and homedata.co.uk. A deployed product by week twelve on your CV in the same city you trained in.
Commercials · the cheapest base for a UK founder
Derby is materially cheaper than London, Manchester or Cambridge for the twelve weeks — rent below £700/mo central, two minutes from the Academy venue, walking distance from the station, and an hour from London when you need to be there. Pricing, discovery, a one-page pilot agreement, the first £500 invoice. A paid pilot by week six.
Investment · East Midlands + national capital network
Cap table from week two, ten-slide deck, financial model, term sheets line by line. Midlands Engine, ART Business Loans, the East Midlands angel network, Mercia, plus the London pre-seed VC graph (Plural/Local Globe/Concrete VC/Pi Labs/EF/Forward Partners/Notion Capital) for graduates raising bigger. A live investor pipeline by demo day — with warm introductions where we have them.
Common questions.
Where exactly is the Derby Academy?
Two minutes’ walk from Derby railway station, in central Derby. Final venue details are shared on acceptance — we do not list the address publicly while the cohort is private.
I am at the University of Derby / DMU / Nottingham. Is the timetable flexible?
The Academy is full-time, intentionally. We have had students fit it into a sandwich year and into the summer after final exams, with the university aware. Talk to us early if your situation needs a custom arrangement.
What about accommodation in Derby?
Living costs in Derby are roughly half what they are in London. We can introduce you to short-term accommodation in the city centre at reasonable rates and to past Academy students who have done the same move.
Is this aimed at students, career changers, or founders?
All three. We have had every shape in the room. The shared thread is willingness to ship — not a particular CV.
How does this compare to AI courses in London?
Same level of teaching, half the cost of living, in a cohort of twelve rather than two hundred, taught by working operators rather than career trainers. The Derby base is a feature, not a constraint.
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 how you would get to Derby for the twelve weeks. James and Louis read every application personally and reply inside the week.
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