Cisco gives a 27-year-old engineer an unlimited token budget, aiming to rewrite 98% of legacy code with AI within 2 years
Cisco President and Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel has assigned 27-year-old engineer Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy to refactor 98% of the company's legacy code using AI within 24 months, providing him with an unlimited token budget. Krishnamurthy co-founded the real-time translation startup EzDubs in 2023, and joined Cisco after the company completed its acquisition in 2025; he has set a four-week validation period for himself. The 98% figure is currently only a set goal, and the report did not disclose the current volume of code modifications or the results of the trial.
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Cisco gave a young engineer an unlimited token budget, with the ultimate goal of using AI to rewrite 98% of legacy code within 2 years
2026-11-02 08:17 IT Home - Qin Cang (Intern)
IT Home, November 2 news: According to Fortune, Cisco President and Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel revealed that he assigned a 27-year-old young engineer the goal of using AI to refactor/rewrite 98% of the company's legacy code within 24 months, and provided him with an unlimited token budget.
IT Home note: Legacy code refers to source code in computer systems related to operating systems or technologies that are no longer maintained, and also refers to code embedded in modern software for compatibility with old features. It is usually written using outdated technology and lacks complete documentation, resulting in high maintenance costs.
"I've given him unlimited tokens because he's going to refactor the code," Patel said. "So I told him, go ahead, do whatever you want." The "him" here refers to Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy, whom Patel affectionately calls "Paddy."
IT Home noted that Krishnamurthy co-founded the real-time translation startup EzDubs in 2023; in 2025, Cisco completed its acquisition of EzDubs, and he joined Cisco along with it. Despite the halo of being a former founder and CEO, Patel said he was at the time "buried deep in the organization, doing marginal matters irrelevant to the big picture."
The turning point came during Patel's visit to Cisco's San Francisco office, when the two had an in-depth conversation. Krishnamurthy proposed that he only needed to form a two-person team to completely rewrite Cisco's massive legacy code. Patel said that before this, even the most forward-looking AI experts on his own team had never had such an idea.
It is reported that Krishnamurthy has set a four-week validation period for himself; his ultimate goal is to complete the refactoring of 98% of Cisco's legacy code within 24 months.
It is worth noting that 98% is currently only an established goal, not an achieved result; and the relevant report did not disclose the current volume of code modifications or the specific effectiveness of the experiment.
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