IT News on November 2nd: According to Fortune, Giitu Patel, President and Chief Product Officer of Cisco (Cisco), revealed that he assigned a 27-year-old young engineer with the goal of reconstructing/rewriting 98% of the company's legacy code (Legacy Code) using AI within 24 months, and provided him with an unlimited Token budget.
IT Note: Legacy code refers to the source code in computer systems that is associated with operating systems or technologies that have ceased maintenance. It also denotes code embedded in modern software for compatibility with old functions. Such code is typically written using outdated technologies and lacks comprehensive documentation, making it more costly to maintain.
“I have given him unlimited Token because he needs to restructure the code,” Patel said, “So I told him to go ahead and do whatever he wants.” The ‘he’ mentioned here refers to Padmanabhan Krishna Mutti ( Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy ), whom Patel affectionately calls ‘Padi’ ( Paddy ).
IT Home noticed that Krishnamurti co-founded a real-time translation startup called EzDubs in 2023; in 2025, Cisco completed the acquisition of EzDubs, and he subsequently joined Cisco. Despite carrying the halo of former founder and CEO, Patel claimed that at the time he was "buried deep within the organization, dealing with peripheral matters that were not crucial to the overall situation."
The turning point occurred during Patel's inspection of Cisco's San Francisco office, when the two had an in-depth exchange. Krishnamurti proposed that with just a team of two, he could completely rewrite Cisco's vast amount of legacy code ( Legacy Code ). Patel stated that prior to this, even the most forward-thinking AI experts in his own team had never had such a concept.
It is reported that Krishnamurti has set a four-week validation period for himself; his ultimate goal is to complete the reconstruction of 98% of the remaining code from Cisco within 24 months.
It is worth noting that 98% is currently merely a set goal, rather than an achieved result; moreover, the relevant reports do not disclose the extent of code modifications made or the specific effectiveness of the experiments.
