A twelve-week AI cohort, ninety minutes from St Pancras.
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. Half the London bootcamp cost; ninety minutes up the East Midlands line.
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.
London has the most AI bootcamps in the UK. Several are good; none is the only option. Derby is ninety minutes by direct train from St Pancras — cohorts of twelve not two hundred, tuition of £6,000 not £8-15,000, cost of living roughly half. If London genuinely fits your situation, do a London bootcamp. If your only reason for picking London is “that is where the AI bootcamps are”, the Midlands is worth a serious look first.
Coding · the stack London AI-natives are hiring for
Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, evals, deploys, observability. London hosts more AI-native employers than anywhere outside SF — DeepMind, Anthropic London, Wayve, Faculty AI, Stability AI, Mistral London, ElevenLabs, Synthesia, PolyAI, Tractable, Causaly — all hiring AI engineers right now. A deployed product by week twelve on your CV before you walk into any of those interviews, with half a London CS finalist’s living cost behind you.
Commercials · sell into the densest UK buyer market
London has more SMBs paying for AI tooling than the rest of the UK combined. Pricing, discovery, a one-page pilot agreement, the first £500 invoice. For London-based founders the discovery calls are easy to set; for those willing to commute the Derby cohort hours then run buyer meetings back in town, the Tuesday/Thursday rotation works. A paid pilot by week six.
Investment · the London VC graph, accessed from Derby
Cap table from week two, ten-slide deck, financial model. The UK pre-seed and seed graph is concentrated in London — Plural, Local Globe, Concrete VC, Pi Labs, EF, Forward Partners, Notion Capital, Octopus, Backed VC, Hoxton, Connect, Atomico. We make warm introductions where we have them. A live investor pipeline by demo day — you can pitch in London on Friday after Thursday in Derby.
Common questions.
Honestly, why should I not just do a London AI bootcamp?
Two honest reasons. First, the cohort scale — large London programmes get there by being cheaper to run, which limits the kind of feedback you can get. Second, the cost of living — you will pay roughly twice as much to be there for the same twelve weeks. If those constraints do not bind you, do London. They bind most students.
Are there any good London AI bootcamps?
Yes. The London ecosystem has several serious offerings. We are not going to name a ranking here, but we will say honestly on a call if your situation fits a London cohort better than ours.
I work in London. Is the Academy realistic?
The Academy is full-time during the twelve weeks — not compatible with a London day job. Past London-based students have negotiated leave, taken a career break, or used a sabbatical. Honest conversation about your specific situation on the first call.
How does Derby compare to London for AI talent and ecosystem?
London has more AI engineers in absolute terms. Derby has Moonlabs, Homemove, home.co.uk, homedata.co.uk, plus a quietly serious tech scene we sit inside. For twelve weeks of operator-led teaching, “ecosystem” is much less relevant than “who is in the room”.
What if I want to be back in London afterwards?
Several graduates have. The Academy is twelve weeks, then your life continues elsewhere. Many of our alumni now work or run companies in London, having done the twelve weeks somewhere materially cheaper.
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 whether ninety minutes up the East Midlands line for twelve weeks is realistic for your London life. James and Louis read every application personally and reply inside the week.
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