Cisco is letting a 27-year-old refactor 98% of its legacy code with unlimited AI tokens: ‘Go nuts’
Cisco president Jeetu Patel gave former startup founder Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy four weeks to demonstrate an AI-assisted code modernization plan.
TL;DR
- Cisco president Jeetu Patel gave 27-year-old Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy unlimited AI tokens to refactor legacy code.
- The reported target is to modernize 98% of Cisco’s legacy code within 24 months, with an initial four-week period to demonstrate the approach.
- The account describes an executive-backed experiment, not a completed refactor or a measured productivity result.
Fortune reported that Cisco president and chief product officer Jeetu Patel gave Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy, a 27-year-old former startup founder, unlimited AI tokens for a legacy-code refactoring effort. Patel described the instruction as “go nuts.” [1]
Krishnamurthy joined Cisco in 2025 after the company acquired EzDubs, a real-time translation startup he co-founded. Fortune said Patel found him working on a project he considered insufficiently strategic and later assigned him the code modernization effort. [1]
The target described in the report is to refactor 98% of Cisco’s legacy code within 24 months. Krishnamurthy set an initial four-week period to demonstrate the approach, and Patel said he hoped to identify other employees who could challenge established practices. [1] [2]
The report documents a management decision and a stated target; it does not establish that the code has already been rewritten, how the effort will be measured, or whether the target will be met. The Hacker News discussion shows reader attention but is not evidence of project outcomes. [1] [2]
Why it matters
The episode shows how a large technology company is pairing AI coding tools with an ambitious legacy-modernization target. Whether the approach produces maintainable code at scale remains unreported.
Editor's note
Fortune is the reporting source; the Hacker News item is included as the scored discussion attached to that article. The 24-month target is attributed to the report, not presented as a completed result.