diff --git a/llama_stack/providers/utils/inference/embedding_mixin.py b/llama_stack/providers/utils/inference/embedding_mixin.py
index 2a16e7f40..8b14c7502 100644
--- a/llama_stack/providers/utils/inference/embedding_mixin.py
+++ b/llama_stack/providers/utils/inference/embedding_mixin.py
@@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ class SentenceTransformerEmbeddingMixin:
         )
         return EmbeddingsResponse(embeddings=embeddings)
 
-    def _load_sentence_transformer_model(self, model: str) -> SentenceTransformer:
+    def _load_sentence_transformer_model(self, model: str) -> "SentenceTransformer":
         global EMBEDDING_MODELS
 
         loaded_model = EMBEDDING_MODELS.get(model)