A twelve-week AI cohort, two hours from Piccadilly.
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.
Manchester has UoM, MMU, Salford and one of the strongest AI talent pipelines in the country — and not yet a serious in-person operator-led bootcamp of its own. Derby is two hours by direct train via East Midlands Railway or CrossCountry. This is mostly a short-stay relocation question: past North-West students have stayed in central Derby Monday-Thursday and gone home for long weekends.
Coding · the stack Manchester employers are hiring for
Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, evals, deploys, observability. Manchester is the second-biggest UK digital economy after London — Auto Trader, BBC, Booking.com Manchester, Co-op Digital, Deloitte Digital, ANS, On the Beach, Boohoo, AccessPay, Dr Martens, ON24 all hire AI engineers here. A deployed product by week twelve on your CV before any UoM, MMU or Salford CS finalist has graduated.
Commercials · the North-West SMB market
Manchester sits at the centre of one of the densest SMB markets outside the South-East — 100,000+ businesses spending on tools an AI agent could replace. Pricing, discovery, a one-page pilot agreement, the first £500 invoice. A paid pilot by week six — for many graduates, sold into a Manchester business they already know.
Investment · the Northern Powerhouse capital network
Cap table from week two, ten-slide deck, financial model, term sheets line by line. Praetura, Mercia, Northstar Ventures, GC Angels, NPIF and the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund — we know the regional capital, we know who actually writes cheques, and we make warm introductions. A live investor pipeline by demo day.
Common questions.
Is two hours really realistic to commute?
Honest answer: most past North West students have not commuted daily — they have stayed in central Derby for the twelve weeks. Two hours is doable for the days you need it; the Academy day is more productive if you can be in Derby from Monday morning.
What about accommodation in Derby?
We can introduce you to short-term central Derby accommodation at sensible rates — materially cheaper than Manchester city centre, let alone London. Some past students have stayed Monday-Thursday and gone home Friday-Sunday.
I am at UoM / MMU. 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 Manchester?
Manchester has good academic AI programmes; the in-person operator-led bootcamp space is thinner. The Academy is a different shape from any of the Manchester academic options — less theory, more shipping, run by working operators.
What about Liverpool, Leeds, Preston, Lancaster?
All within reach by train. We have had past students commute or relocate from each. The Derby base sits roughly equidistant between the South and the North, which is partly why we chose it.
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 based in the North West. James and Louis read every application personally and reply inside the week.
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