Cisco Targets 98% Legacy Code Refactor With AI

Cisco president Jeetu Patel has given 27-year-old ex-founder Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy unlimited AI tokens to refactor 98% of the company's legacy code within 24 months, starting with a four-week proof test. Patel says the effort reflects a push to hire young AI-native talent to challenge the status quo.

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Cisco is betting that AI-driven refactoring by a two-person team can modernize nearly all of its legacy codebase within 24 months, a scale few incumbents have attempted. If the four-week proof succeeds, it would show large enterprise software and networking estates can be rewritten at a fraction of the usual engineering cost. Unlimited token usage points to AI coding tools and model providers as direct beneficiaries of such programs. The approach could pressure legacy-heavy competitors to try similar efforts or risk a slower pace of product development. Execution risk is high, since regressions in networking and security code could hurt customers, and the article gives no independent evidence the target is achievable.