diff --git a/verl/utils/checkpoint/fsdp_checkpoint_manager.py b/verl/utils/checkpoint/fsdp_checkpoint_manager.py
index 7df4b39a60d..bf9206d5498 100644
--- a/verl/utils/checkpoint/fsdp_checkpoint_manager.py
+++ b/verl/utils/checkpoint/fsdp_checkpoint_manager.py
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@
 
 import torch
 import torch.distributed
+from accelerate import init_empty_weights
 from torch.distributed.fsdp import FullStateDictConfig, ShardedOptimStateDictConfig, ShardedStateDictConfig, StateDictType
 from torch.distributed.fsdp import FullyShardedDataParallel as FSDP
 from transformers import GenerationConfig, PreTrainedTokenizer, ProcessorMixin
@@ -197,7 +198,7 @@ def save_checkpoint(self, local_path: str, hdfs_path: str = None, global_step: i
                 else:
                     raise NotImplementedError(f"Unknown architecture {model_config['architectures']}")
 
-                with torch.device("meta"):
+                with init_empty_weights():
                     save_model = auto_model_cls.from_config(model_config, torch_dtype=torch.bfloat16)
                 save_model.to_empty(device="cpu")