Cisco grants engineer unlimited AI tokens to refactor legacy code
| Source: HN | Original article
Cisco is giving an engineer unlimited AI tokens to overhaul its legacy codebase.
Cisco’s president, Jeetu Patel, has handed a 27‑year‑old engineer unlimited access to generative‑AI tools to overhaul the company’s sprawling legacy codebase. The engineer, Padmanabhan “Paddy” Krishnamurthy – a former startup founder who joined Cisco after its 2025 acquisition of real‑time translation firm EzDubs – was told to “go nuts” as he and one colleague set out to rewrite roughly 98 % of Cisco’s existing software within a two‑year window. A four‑week proof period has been stipulated to gauge early progress.
The move signals a decisive shift for the $429 billion networking giant, which has spent more than four decades building hardware and software for enterprise customers. By allocating “unlimited AI tokens,” Cisco is betting that large‑language‑model assistants can accelerate refactoring, reduce technical debt, and free engineers from the manual, error‑prone work that typically stalls modernization projects. If successful, the initiative could serve as a high‑profile case study for other legacy‑heavy enterprises wrestling with aging codebases.
Watch for early results from the four‑week trial, which will likely be disclosed in internal briefings or follow‑up press releases. Analysts will be keen to see whether AI‑driven refactoring meets the ambitious 98 % target, how cost‑effective the token model proves, and whether the approach scales beyond a two‑person team. The outcome could shape corporate strategies around AI‑assisted software maintenance across the tech sector.
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