A twelve-week AI cohort, an hour from Sheffield 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.
Sheffield has the University of Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam, a growing tech scene and a quietly serious engineering tradition. Derby is just over an hour up the line by direct CrossCountry or East Midlands Railway. This is a commute question, not a relocation question: past Sheffield students have travelled in daily and been home for dinner.
Coding · the stack Sheffield employers are hiring for
Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, evals, deploys, observability. Sheffield hosts the AMRC and Boeing’s UK manufacturing-AI partnership, WANdisco, 3Squared, Twinkl, Plusnet, Sky Bet, Tata Steel digital, BAE Systems Sheffield and the post-USFD AI cluster — all hiring AI engineers. A deployed product by week twelve on your CV before any USFD or Sheffield Hallam CS finalist has graduated.
Commercials · sell into the South Yorkshire SMB market
Sheffield sits at the centre of a 30,000-business South Yorkshire SMB market with AI buying decisions still mostly unmade and a price ceiling materially below London. Pricing, discovery, a one-page pilot agreement, the first £500 invoice. A paid pilot by week six — for many graduates, sold into a Sheffield business they already know.
Investment · the Northern + Midlands capital network
Cap table from week two, ten-slide deck, financial model, term sheets line by line. Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund (NPIF), Mercia, Northstar Ventures, GC Angels, plus Midlands Engine and ART Business Loans when graduates raise either side of the M1. A live investor pipeline by demo day.
Common questions.
How long is the commute from Sheffield to Derby?
Just over an hour by direct train from Sheffield station to Derby. The Academy venue is two minutes’ walk from Derby station — practical door-to-door is around 90 minutes.
I am at UoS or Sheffield Hallam. 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.
What about accommodation in Derby if I want to stay?
We can introduce you to short-term central Derby accommodation at sensible rates — cheaper than Sheffield city centre, materially cheaper than London. Some past students have stayed in Derby Monday-Thursday and gone home for the weekend.
How does this compare to AI courses in Manchester or Leeds?
Both cities have credible academic options; the in-person operator-led bootcamp space is thinner. The Academy is a different shape from any of the Northern academic options — less theory, more shipping, run by working operators.
What about Rotherham, Doncaster, Chesterfield, Barnsley?
All reachable inside ninety minutes by train. Several past students have travelled in from each. The Academy is built around being reachable from most of the Midlands and southern Yorkshire inside an hour or so.
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 South Yorkshire. James and Louis read every application personally and reply inside the week.
© 2026 Moonlabs Incubator. All rights reserved.