Cisco Gave a 27-Year-Old Unlimited AI Tokens to Rewrite 98% of Its Code: What We Know
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“Jeetu Patel” is one of the top U.S. searches on Google Trends today, and the reason is a story about AI and software jobs. Cisco’s president and chief product officer told Fortune he has given a 27-year-old engineer “unlimited tokens” to try to rewrite almost all of Cisco’s legacy code with AI. Here’s what was actually said, and what it means for people who use AI coding tools.
At a glance
- Who: Padmanabhan “Paddy” Krishnamurthy, 27, who joined Cisco in 2025 when it acquired EzDubs, the real-time translation startup he co-founded in 2023.
- The goal: rewrite 98% of Cisco’s legacy code within 24 months, with a two-person team.
- Status: a four-week proof period. Nothing has been delivered yet.
- The quote: “I’ve given him unlimited tokens because he’s going to refactor code… you can go nuts.” (Jeetu Patel, to Fortune)
What happened
According to Fortune, Patel met Krishnamurthy at Cisco’s San Francisco office and found him “buried away in the organization doing something unstrategic,” five levels below Patel. Krishnamurthy said he could rewrite Cisco’s legacy code with a team of two. Patel gave him unlimited AI tokens (tokens are the units AI models are billed by). Krishnamurthy has given himself four weeks to prove the approach. The bigger target is 98% of the legacy code in two years.
The 98% is a target, not a result
As Business Upturn points out, the headline number is doing a lot of work. The report doesn’t define what counts as “rewritten,” which code is in scope, or how the share will be measured, and no results from the four-week trial have been published. Treat any claim that Cisco “rewrote 98% of its code with AI” as unproven for now.
The real story: hiring young, AI-native engineers
Fortune frames this as a hiring story. Patel says roughly a third of his team are experienced operators, a third are outside “systems thinkers,” and a third are “AI-native” founders and engineers working “in founder mode.” He told Fortune he’s looking for more people like Krishnamurthy, and The Times of India quotes him saying “Tension is good” when mixing new hires with veterans.
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What this means if you use AI coding tools
- Refactoring is where AI is being bet on. Big companies are testing AI on the boring, expensive work of modernizing old code, not just writing new features.
- Token budgets matter. “Unlimited tokens” is a perk because heavy AI coding use costs real money. If you pay for an AI coding assistant, watch your usage limits.
- Proof periods are smart. Cisco’s four-week test is a good model: try AI on one real chunk of code, measure it, then scale.
- Review still matters. No source says the AI-written code skips human review. Whatever tool you use, test and review its output.
Our take
This is an interesting bet, not a finished success. The things worth watching are what Cisco reports after the four-week proof and how it defines “rewritten.” We’ll update this post if Cisco publishes results.
Sources: Fortune, Tom’s Hardware, Business Upturn, TokenPost and The Times of India, all Oct 30, 2026. Trending data: Google Trends daily U.S. search trends, checked Oct 30, 2026. This article is news commentary, not professional or career advice.
