Bobby Allyn
Bobby Allyn is a business reporter at NPR based in San Francisco. He covers technology and how Silicon Valley's largest companies are transforming how we live and reshaping society.
He came to San Francisco from Washington, where he focused on national breaking news and politics. Before that, he covered criminal justice at member station WHYY.
In that role, he focused on major corruption trials, law enforcement, and local criminal justice policy. He helped lead NPR's reporting of Bill Cosby's two criminal trials. He was a guest on Fresh Air after breaking a major story about the nation's first supervised injection site plan in Philadelphia. In between daily stories, he has worked on several investigative projects, including a story that exposed how the federal government was quietly hiring debt collection law firms to target the homes of student borrowers who had defaulted on their loans. Allyn also strayed from his beat to cover Philly parking disputes that divided in the city, the last meal at one of the city's last all-night diners, and a remembrance of the man who wrote the Mister Softee jingle on a xylophone in the basement of his Northeast Philly home.
At other points in life, Allyn has been a staff reporter at Nashville Public Radio and daily newspapers including The Oregonian in Portland and The Tennessean in Nashville. His work has also appeared in BuzzFeed News, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.
A native of Wilkes-Barre, a former mining town in Northeastern Pennsylvania, Allyn is the son of a machinist and a church organist. He's a dedicated bike commuter and long-distance runner. He is a graduate of American University in Washington.
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Elon Musk says he is launching a new political party. It comes after Musk's explosive breakup with President Trump. Musk has been critical of Republicans' support for Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill."
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What did the Department of Government Efficiency actually accomplish under Elon Musk? And what might change now that Musk is out? One former DOGE worker is going public and sharing what he learned.
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From space travel to military operations to the future of green energy, the U.S. has become reliant on Elon Musk's business empire. But it won't be easy for the government to end its reliance on Musk. -
Current and former Meta employees fear the new automation push comes at the cost of allowing AI to make tricky determinations about how Meta's apps could lead to real world harm. -
Elon Musk says he is leaving the federal government behind after making controversial cuts now at the center of lawsuits. But he says the work of DOGE will continue.
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The billionaire executive was Trump's biggest donor in 2024. Now, however, he is planning to cut back his spending on politics, he said on Tuesday. -
Several major tech CEOs joined President Trump on his trip to Saudi Arabia this week. It's part of a thaw in the once-strained relationship between Big Tech and the oil-rich state.
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The incarcerated former Silicon Valley star is advising her partner on a new health tech startup. Holmes was convicted of defrauding investors in her blood-testing company Theranos. -
In a rare rebuke, more than a dozen former workers of the powerful data-mining and surveillance company say the firm's work with the Trump administration violates the company's founding principles. -
It may not be a household name, but Palantir is now one of the world's most valuable companies. Its "spy tech" is set to gain more government and military work in the Trump administration.
