Spend your levy on a course that ships.
Moonlabs is the operator-led AI Academy in Derby. We run three live companies — Homemove, home.co.uk and homedata.co.uk — and we train 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 — usually Apprenticeship-Levy fundable.
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 pay the Apprenticeship Levy ourselves, sit on the buyer side of L&D conversations every quarter, and have seen what good and bad levy-funded training actually produce. The case on this page is the one our own CFO-equivalents approve.
The Academy is what we do. A twelve-week, in-person, twelve-student cohort in Derby. Your employee builds a real AI product (often inside your own workflow), signs a paid pilot or internal sponsor, writes a deck and a financial model. They leave with a deployed system and senior-band capability inside the same role they came in at. Coding, Commercials, Investment — the three pillars taught in equal weight every week.
Why this page exists. The UK Apprenticeship Levy returns more than £3bn a year to employers and roughly half goes unspent. The reason is simple — there are not enough good programmes to spend it on. Most AI apprenticeship offerings are slow, generic, and produce a graduate who can describe AI but cannot ship anything with it. Your employee leaves the Academy as a working AI-native operator with a deployed product the business can use on Monday — not a binder of theory.
Coding · the deployed tool the business can use Monday
Your employee builds a real AI product, often inside your own workflow, with Cursor, Claude Code and Codex on real frameworks. Production retrieval, agents, evals, observability, deploy pipelines. A deployed AI tool by week twelve — the artefact your L&D report can point to instead of a folder of completed modules.
Commercials · senior-band capability in twelve weeks
Graduates routinely operate at senior bands inside their existing companies inside a quarter. Pricing, discovery calls, the internal sponsor conversation, the pilot agreement. The same employee returns able to run an AI commissioning conversation with a vendor and tell the difference between a working production system and a polished demo. A measurable productivity step-change by week twelve.
Investment · levy that would otherwise expire
Roughly half of the £3bn UK Apprenticeship Levy is forfeited each year — yours expires after 24 months. We work with registered apprenticeship providers to map the Academy into qualifying arrangements. SMBs under £3m payroll route via the 95% government co-investment. A funded place that returns a working AI operator inside a quarter. Talk to us as an employer.
Common questions.
Is the Moonlabs Academy a registered apprenticeship provider?
We work alongside registered providers to package the Academy into a qualifying training arc where the Apprenticeship Levy applies. Talk to us early and we will introduce you to the partner providers we work with for this; we are not the registered body ourselves.
How much of the cost can the levy cover?
Depends on the structure of your engagement and the apprenticeship standard it is mapped against. We have seen the levy cover the full Academy cost in eligible arrangements; in other cases it covers a significant proportion and your L&D budget covers the rest. We will be upfront about what is possible in your specific case before either side commits.
What about employers who do not pay the levy (under £3m payroll)?
You may still be eligible for co-investment funding, where the government covers 95% of approved apprenticeship costs. We will walk you through the mechanics. Many of our SMB partners route the Academy this way.
Who is the right kind of employee to send?
Someone with the curiosity and the appetite to actually do the work. We have had engineers, salespeople, product managers, analysts and operations leads all graduate strongly. The pattern is willingness, not job title.
Can multiple employees go together?
Yes — several employers have sent two or three in the same cohort. Discounts available for groups; talk to us early.
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.
Spend your levy on a course that ships.
Tell us how much levy you have unspent and who you would send. James and Louis read every employer brief personally and reply inside the week — we will scope the funding case alongside your L&D team.
© 2026 Moonlabs Incubator. All rights reserved.