A twelve-week AI cohort, instead of (or before) three years.
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 — against a £27,000 degree.
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.
If you are eighteen and weighing a CS degree against the Academy, you are weighing a three-year curriculum written before frontier AI existed against a twelve-week cohort built around it. Both can be right. Some school leavers do the Academy as a gap year and go to university afterwards with a deployed product on their CV. Some do it instead. Some do it as a deliberate first step into hiring. Read the parents page together before you push send.
Coding · what UCL/Imperial/Cambridge teach in year 3, in 12 weeks
Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, production retrieval, agents, evals, observability, deploy pipelines. The applied AI engineering stack a CS degree introduces around year 3 (if at all) is what you ship in week 4. A deployed AI product by week twelve — before most freshers have finished orientation.
Commercials · £6k now vs £27k + 3 years
Twelve weeks of operator-led cohort against three years of degree fees. Bursaries, scholarships, employer funding and apprenticeship routes accepted. Pricing, discovery calls, a one-page pilot agreement, the first £500 invoice. A paid pilot by week six — the artefact a degree route does not have for another five years.
Investment · founder option at 18
Some school leavers do the Academy as a gap year and go to university afterwards with a deployed product on their CV; some do it instead; some do it as a deliberate first step. Cursor’s founders, Lovable’s founders, ChatPRD’s founder were all near or under 22 when they started. Cap table from week two, ten-slide deck. A live investor pipeline by demo day — or a credible offer at an AI-native employer if you choose the job route. Read the parents page together first.
Common questions.
Should I do this instead of university, or as a gap year?
Both work. Some students do the Academy on a gap year and go to university afterwards with a deployed product on their CV — universities tend to welcome that signal. Others do it as a deliberate first step into the workforce or into founding. We have an honest conversation about your specific situation on the first call.
I have a CS or AI offer from a Russell Group university. Should I turn it down?
Almost never on the strength of one Academy page. The Academy is a complement or an alternative depending on what you want from your early twenties. Defer for a gap year, do the Academy in that year, and decide from a position of strength. Many students have done exactly that.
What do my parents need to know?
A great deal — which is why there is a whole page for them. Cost, safeguarding, outcomes, the honest case for and against. Read the parents page before you push send.
I have not done a Computer Science A-level. Does that matter?
Not as much as it used to. AI tooling has collapsed the on-ramp dramatically. We have taken students from zero code to a deployed product in twelve weeks. The bar is willingness to do the work — bring it.
When does the next cohort start?
The summer cohort starts in mid-June 2026 and runs through to early September. That timing is deliberate — fits between A-level results and the start of the academic year, so a gap year decision can wait until you know your grades.
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 with A-levels and what you would build. Read the parents page together first — we expect honest due diligence at this age and we welcome it. James and Louis reply inside the week.
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