Jeetu Patel: Building Products for the AI Era

At 19, Jeetu Patel left Bombay for Chicago with almost nothing: a mother he wouldn’t see again for seven years, a stutter, and no idea whether he’d stay. Today he is President and Chief Product Officer at Cisco, one of the most important technology companies in the world, helping steer it through the AI infrastructure build-out. In this episode of A Bit Personal, Jodi Shelton sits down with Jeetu for a conversation between new friends, “getting to know each other in public.” He takes us from a community college computer science class to an internship at Doculabs, where he borrowed a quarter million dollars from a mentor to buy into the business and then ran it for 17 years. Then came the move to EMC, the years at Box, and the leap to Cisco six years ago. Jeetu also opens up about the people who shaped him, including a father whose choices he spent years angry about and eventually forgave, and a mother who was his best friend and whose advice still guides him: take the job that scares you more. We talk about why he never saw his own success as inevitable, what a Taj Mahal tour guide taught him about the power of a platform, and why he believes the most meaningful moments at work come from a team chasing a goal that seems almost impossible. On the business side, Jeetu explains how Cisco, which missed the cloud wave, is positioning itself as the “picks and shovels” company of the AI gold rush, and how it went from zero to $9.3 billion in AI infrastructure orders from hyperscalers in fiscal 2026. He also makes the case for why AI should be treated as a tool for learning rather than a shortcut around it, why the narrative around the technology needs balance, and why leading in AI is, in his words, “the most American thing we can do.” We close with the question every executive should be asked: when no one needs anything from you, what does a perfect day look like? This is a conversation about gratitude, grit, and what you do with the opportunities you’re handed. This episode is brought to you by JP Morgan. Visit jpmorgan.com/techib

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