diff --git a/mergekit/io/lazy_tensor_loader.py b/mergekit/io/lazy_tensor_loader.py
index 94931a08..d450707f 100644
--- a/mergekit/io/lazy_tensor_loader.py
+++ b/mergekit/io/lazy_tensor_loader.py
@@ -98,7 +98,7 @@ def from_disk(cls, base_path: str) -> "ShardedTensorIndex":
                     tensor_paths = {key: shard_name for key in st.keys()}
             else:
                 # this is ugly but not much else can be done
-                shard = torch.load(model_path)
+                shard = torch.load(model_path, map_location="meta")
                 if "state_dict" in shard:
                     shard = shard["state_dict"]
 
diff --git a/mergekit/scripts/mixtral_moe.py b/mergekit/scripts/mixtral_moe.py
index 08559c5c..0e2355ca 100644
--- a/mergekit/scripts/mixtral_moe.py
+++ b/mergekit/scripts/mixtral_moe.py
@@ -100,6 +100,7 @@ def get_gate_params(
     load_in_4bit: bool = False,
     load_in_8bit: bool = False,
     lazy_unpickle: bool = False,
+    device: str = "auto",
 ):
     gate_vecs = []
     _do_it = None
@@ -121,7 +122,7 @@ def get_gate_params(
         model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
             model_ref.path,
             torch_dtype=torch.bfloat16,
-            device_map="auto",
+            device_map=device,
             low_cpu_mem_usage=True,
             load_in_4bit=load_in_4bit,
             load_in_8bit=load_in_8bit,
@@ -150,6 +151,7 @@ def build(
     load_in_4bit: bool = False,
     load_in_8bit: bool = False,
     lazy_unpickle: bool = False,
+    device: str = "auto",
 ):
     base_model = ModelReference.parse(config.base_model)
     base_cfg = base_model.config()
@@ -223,6 +225,7 @@ def build(
         load_in_4bit=load_in_4bit,
         load_in_8bit=load_in_8bit,
         lazy_unpickle=lazy_unpickle,
+        device=device,
     )
     # gate_vecs: (num_layers, num_experts, hidden_size)
 
@@ -251,6 +254,9 @@ def main(
     lazy_unpickle: Annotated[
         bool, typer.Option(help="Use experimental lazy unpickler")
     ] = False,
+    device: Annotated[
+        str, typer.Option(help="Device to use to compute embeddings")
+    ] = "auto",
 ):
     with open(config_path, "r", encoding="utf-8") as file:
         data = yaml.load(file, yaml.SafeLoader)
@@ -262,6 +268,7 @@ def main(
         load_in_4bit=load_in_4bit,
         load_in_8bit=load_in_8bit,
         lazy_unpickle=lazy_unpickle,
+        device=device,
     )