Cisco President and Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel has put 27-year-old Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy in charge of one of the company’s largest software modernization projects, aimed at rewriting 98% of its legacy code within 24 months. Krishnamurthy joined Cisco in 2025 after the $429 billion technology company acquired EzDubs, the real-time translation startup he cofounded in 2023. Patel has given him an effectively unlimited budget for AI coding tools and four weeks to demonstrate the approach with a proposed two-person team. Patel said Krishnamurthy had been buried deep in Cisco’s organization until their meeting at the company’s San Francisco office, and he is seeking more young employees who can challenge established systems. He argues that early-career workers bring questions and perspectives experienced staff may overlook, even when their arrival creates productive tension. Patel also described Baya, a Stanford scholarship student who maintained monthly updates about her AI learning, won a Cisco internship and redesigned something experienced employees had been unable to solve. Other executives and investors, including Josh Kushner, Alon Chen and Will.i.am, likewise say they are seeking young, AI-native talent. Patel said his own team combines experienced operators, outside systems thinkers and entrepreneurial founders, CEOs and engineers, with the combination proving more effective than any group alone.