diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 784274d..b1fd7de 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -54,6 +54,10 @@ jax = [
     "orbax-checkpoint",
 ]
 pytorch = [
+    # safetensors is required to load the Hugging Face checkpoint
+    # (model.safetensors via PyTorchModelHubMixin); huggingface_hub treats it
+    # as optional and fails with a NameError at load() time without it.
+    "safetensors",
     "torch",
 ]
 
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 9a5e4e4..6068f94 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -151,6 +151,8 @@ rich==13.7.1
     # via
     #   flax
     #   typer
+safetensors==0.8.0
+    # via tabfm (pyproject.toml)
 scikit-learn==1.6.0
     # via tabfm (pyproject.toml)
 scipy==1.17.1