Cisco gave a 27-year-old unlimited AI tokens to rewrite its legacy code

A company that sells to every bank, airline and government ran into the same problem that eats smaller companies. It had too much old code and not enough people who wanted to touch it. Cisco's answer this week is one person.

Fortune reported on 30 October 2026. Cisco president Jeetu Patel has handed Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy, aged 27, a job. The job is to refactor 98% of the company's legacy code in 24 months. Patel spoke to Fortune at a roundtable dinner. "I've given him unlimited tokens because he's going to refactor code," he said. "So I'm like, you can go, you can go nuts."

Who Krishnamurthy is, in Fortune's words

Krishnamurthy, called "Paddy", joined Cisco in 2025. The $429 billion company bought EzDubs, a real-time translation startup he cofounded in 2023. He was, in Patel's words, "buried away in the organization doing something unstrategic". He sat five levels below the president. Patel dropped into Cisco's San Francisco office. They got talking. The talk turned to legacy code.

Fortune reports what Krishnamurthy told Patel. He could rewrite Cisco's legacy code with a two-person team. Patel said even the most AI-forward people on his own team weren't thinking that way. He gave Krishnamurthy four weeks for a proof of concept. He gave him 24 months for the full job.

The pattern Patel describes

Patel told Fortune his team mix is a third, a third and a third. One third are experienced scaled operators. One third are systems thinkers from the market. One third are entrepreneurial founders, CEOs and engineers who are AI-native. "Either of these groups by themselves aren't nearly as potent as when all three work together," he told Fortune. "It's what creates magic."

He also told Fortune he treats every intern as "kind of a reverse mentor". He does talks at colleges to find students who are "hungry". Fortune cites one example. A Stanford scholarship student named Baya, aged 17 or 18. Patel told her to email him every month with what she had learned about AI. She did. She landed an internship. She redesigned something the experienced staff had not been able to crack.

Patel told Fortune he wants friction, not conflict. "Tension is good," he said. "I actually try to create tension in the teams because you want to have enough friction on the ideas. You don't want to have friction with people and personalities."

Fortune also quotes three other hirers. Josh Kushner at Thrive Capital. Alon Chen at Tastewise. The musician and investor Will.i.am. All three told Fortune they prefer hiring Gen Z with no experience.

Fortune does not publish several numbers. How much of Cisco's codebase has already been migrated. How big the legacy code is in lines. Which languages are involved. How a "token" budget was priced. Patel's figure for the refactor is 98% of legacy code in 24 months. Tom's Hardware reported on Fortune's story the same day. Tom's Hardware wrote that every large company sitting on old code will watch this test.

The Cisco bet is one way the AI business is going to pay for itself. One founder with a model account can, in the president's view, do the work of a team. If it works, Cisco staffs its product and infrastructure teams differently. If it fails, Patel told Fortune he gets to say the test was run.

Source

Cisco chief found a 27-year-old ex-founder... now the Gen Zer is rewriting 98% of its code, Fortune. Tom's Hardware: Cisco gives 27-year-old engineer unlimited AI tokens.