What happened
Cisco president Jeetu Patel told Fortune he gave 27-year-old Padmanabhan 'Paddy' Krishnamurthy unlimited AI tokens and told him to 'go nuts' refactoring legacy code, targeting 98% rewritten in 24 months.
Why it matters
The test is whether a two-person team can lean on AI tokens — rather than headcount — to clear a large legacy code rewrite, a task enterprises usually staff far more heavily.
WHO IT HITSEnterprise software and IT leaders weighing how much legacy-code cleanup can be handled by a tiny team armed with AI tools, rather than a large engineering staff, are the audience this lands on.
Summaries like this, every morning.
Cisco's bet is unusual less for the AI tooling than for the staffing: a two-person team is being pointed at a legacy codebase with a 98% rewrite target over 24 months. The engineer, Padmanabhan 'Paddy' Krishnamurthy, arrived via Cisco's 2025 acquisition of real-time translation startup EzDubs, and Cisco president Jeetu Patel described the arrangement to Fortune as giving him unlimited AI tokens and telling him to 'go nuts'. The 24-month window and the 98% figure are the concrete yardsticks attached to the plan.
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