diff --git a/scripts/build-dev-bundle-common.sh b/scripts/build-dev-bundle-common.sh
index 1b360d5ed9..764fd5eb2f 100644
--- a/scripts/build-dev-bundle-common.sh
+++ b/scripts/build-dev-bundle-common.sh
@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ ARCH=$(uname -m)
 NODE_VERSION=18.16.0
 MONGO_VERSION_64BIT=6.0.3
 MONGO_VERSION_32BIT=3.2.22
-NPM_VERSION=8.19.4
+NPM_VERSION=9.6.7
 
 
 if [ "$UNAME" == "Linux" ] ; then
diff --git a/scripts/dev-bundle-tool-package.js b/scripts/dev-bundle-tool-package.js
index 88524a19b1..1210211490 100644
--- a/scripts/dev-bundle-tool-package.js
+++ b/scripts/dev-bundle-tool-package.js
@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ var packageJson = {
   dependencies: {
     // Explicit dependency because we are replacing it with a bundled version
     // and we want to make sure there are no dependencies on a higher version
-    npm: "8.19.4",
+    npm: "9.6.7",
     "node-gyp": "8.0.0",
     "node-pre-gyp": "0.15.0",
     typescript: "4.9.4",
diff --git a/scripts/generate-dev-bundle.sh b/scripts/generate-dev-bundle.sh
index c87ca5409d..72d1cbc043 100755
--- a/scripts/generate-dev-bundle.sh
+++ b/scripts/generate-dev-bundle.sh
@@ -95,9 +95,10 @@ cd "$DIR/lib"
 # Overwrite the bundled version with the latest version of npm.
 npm install "npm@$NPM_VERSION"
 # Starting from npm v9.5.1 we can't set the python (and many others) config
-# https://github.com/npm/cli/issues/6126 - the workaround for now is to keep
-# on npm v8.19.4
-npm config set python `which python3`
+# https://github.com/npm/cli/issues/6126
+# for now we'll not set it anymore and see if it works
+# if it doesn't, we can set python3 in other ways
+#npm config set python `which python3`
 which node
 which npm
 npm version
diff --git a/tools/isobuild/meteor-npm.js b/tools/isobuild/meteor-npm.js
index 9d8b74999f..441df26566 100644
--- a/tools/isobuild/meteor-npm.js
+++ b/tools/isobuild/meteor-npm.js
@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ var meteorNpm = exports;
 const LOCK_FILE_VERSION = 4;
 
 // Expose the version of npm in use from the dev bundle.
-meteorNpm.npmVersion = "8.19.4";
+meteorNpm.npmVersion = "9.6.7";
 
 // if a user exits meteor while we're trying to create a .npm
 // directory, we will have temporary directories that we clean up