From the lab to the production stack.
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+, and have shipped AI features in production every working week since the week ChatGPT shipped. The engineering disciplines on this page are the ones we use ourselves — tested in front of real users at real load, not in front of a thesis committee.
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 on it. 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.
Why this page exists. Researchers and lecturers in AI-adjacent fields are some of the strongest potential operators in any cohort — patience, precision, tolerance for hard problems that civilian engineers rarely match. What you typically do not bring is the production engineering, the commercials, the willingness to ship imperfect, and a portfolio that reads outside the lab. You leave the Academy as the researcher who can also ship — the rarest profile in the AI market, and the one investors and AI-native employers are loudest about wanting.
Coding · theory you already have, plus shipping
You bring the maths, the intuitions, the patience. We add eval suites under load, observability, retrieval at scale, agent orchestration, deploy pipelines, cost discipline — the engineering a lab does not teach because it does not need to. A deployed AI product by week twelve — the artefact that turns an academic CV into a senior-applied one.
Commercials · the research-to-applied salary jump
Senior applied AI roles at AI-native employers (Anthropic, Cohere, Mistral, Wayve, Faculty AI, ElevenLabs) pay 3-4x the postdoc band — if you can show shipping evidence. Pricing your own work, customer discovery, a one-page pilot agreement. A paid pilot or a credible senior-applied offer by week six.
Investment · raising as a researcher-founder
Anthropic (ex-OpenAI researchers, $7.3bn raised), Cohere, Mistral ($2bn, ex-Meta FAIR), Inflection, Reka AI, DeepMind alumni founders backed at every London seed fund — researcher-founders raise top-decile rounds because the technical depth shows in the demo. Cap table, ten-slide deck, financial model. A live investor pipeline by demo day.
Common questions.
I am two years into a PhD. Should I drop out?
Almost never on the strength of one Academy page. Common patterns: take a year out and do the Academy, then decide; do the Academy after submission as an applied finishing course; or do it as part of a planned industry move toward the end of the PhD.
I am a postdoc considering an industry move. Honest take?
Postdocs are one of our strongest applicant profiles. The combination of research depth and twelve weeks of applied engineering and commercials produces operators who are rare in the market and easy to place. Several past postdoc graduates are now in senior applied roles.
Will I lose research depth?
No — you keep it. The Academy adds engineering and commercials on top; it does not replace the underlying ML training. Many graduates use both at different stages.
How does this compare to a Cambridge or Edinburgh academic AI route?
They are different artefacts. Academic routes teach research depth and produce papers and credentials. The Academy teaches applied engineering and commercials and produces a deployed product. Cambridge comparison; Edinburgh comparison.
Can I keep teaching part-time while on the Academy?
The Academy is full-time during the twelve weeks. Some past students have negotiated a reduced teaching load or used research leave; honest conversation about your specific situation on the first call.
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 where you are in your research career and what AI product you would build first. James and Louis read every application personally and reply inside the week.
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