AI for recruiters, by builders.
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. We hire across all three and run AI-native sourcing, screening and outreach in production every week. The tooling on this page is what we use to hire ourselves.
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. Recruiting is one of the functions AI is reshaping fastest and most visibly — sourcing, screening, outreach, scheduling and reference work are all being rebuilt around agents this year. The recruiters being promoted in 2026 are the ones who can build the systems themselves; the recruiters being cut are the ones still running the 2022 workflow. A solo recruiter with AI infrastructure runs a desk at fractional cost. A recruitment firm that ships AI tooling charges differently. The commercial reshape is real and the Academy is the route through it.
Coding · the recruiter’s AI stack, built
Retrieval over candidate pools, screening agents that match a real brief, outreach personalisation that does not look written by an agent, pipeline analytics. Fairness checks and bias evals from week one because AI-in-recruiting must be defensible. A deployed recruiting-AI tool by week twelve.
Commercials · the AI-native desk economics
A solo recruiter with this tooling can run two or three desks at once. An agency can productise an AI-sourcing retainer. Pricing, discovery calls, a one-page pilot agreement, the first paying customer. A paid pilot by week six — for many, sold back to a client they already know.
Investment · raising on recruiting-AI
Mercor at $2bn, Eightfold a unicorn, HireEZ raised $26m, Paradox at $1.5bn, Metaview funded by Plural — recruiting-AI is one of the most heavily-backed vertical-AI categories in the world right now. Cap table, ten-slide deck, financial model, term sheets. A live investor pipeline by demo day.
Common questions.
I have never coded. Is this realistic for a recruiter?
Yes. AI tooling has collapsed the on-ramp dramatically; we have taken senior non-coding professionals through to a deployed product in twelve weeks. More on that here.
Will I learn how to evaluate vendor recruiting-AI products too?
Yes. After twelve weeks of building you can read a HireEZ, Eightfold or HireVue demo with operator-grade scepticism. The procurement conversations you have on the other side are fundamentally different.
Can my firm pay for this?
Often yes — the Apprenticeship Levy and L&D budgets can apply, particularly inside larger recruitment firms and in-house TA functions. Full funding routes here.
I run a small recruitment business. Should I send myself or hire an AI engineer?
Honest answer: for most small recruitment firms, sending yourself or a senior recruiter is better leverage in 2026 than hiring an engineer. The market does not yet have enough AI engineers who understand recruiting; the bridge needs to come from your side.
Will I leave able to sell AI-recruiting services to my clients?
Yes, with operator-grade credibility. The deployed portfolio piece does most of the work in the conversation; the engineering language you pick up does the rest.
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 your desk or function looks like today and what AI tool you would build for it. James and Louis read every application personally and reply inside the week.
© 2026 Moonlabs Incubator. All rights reserved.