Cisco President and Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel has given 27-year-old engineer Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy unlimited AI tokens to rewrite 98 percent of the company’s legacy code within 24 months. Krishnamurthy, known as Paddy, joined Cisco in 2025 after the acquisition of EzDubs, a real-time translation startup he co-founded. Despite his founder background he had been assigned a relatively minor role. After meeting Patel in San Francisco he proposed tackling the rewrite with a two-person team. Patel approved the project and told him to use as many tokens as needed. Krishnamurthy has set a four-week period to demonstrate progress before scaling the effort. Patel has said younger employees can challenge established practices and that some productive tension is useful. The assignment reflects Cisco’s broader push to use AI heavily in product development.
Cisco President and Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel has given 27-year-old engineer Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy unlimited AI tokens to rewrite 98 percent of the company’s legacy code within 24 months. Krishnamurthy, known as Paddy, joined Cisco in 2025 after the acquisition of EzDubs, a real-time translation startup he co-founded. Despite his founder background he had been assigned a relatively minor role. After meeting Patel in San Francisco he proposed tackling the rewrite with a two-person team. Patel approved the project and told him to use as many tokens as needed. Krishnamurthy has set a four-week period to demonstrate progress before scaling the effort. Patel has said younger employees can challenge established practices and that some productive tension is useful. The assignment reflects Cisco’s broader push to use AI heavily in product development.