diff --git a/unsloth/models/loader_utils.py b/unsloth/models/loader_utils.py
index c6e43e7add..bb6a5b5cc0 100644
--- a/unsloth/models/loader_utils.py
+++ b/unsloth/models/loader_utils.py
@@ -21,15 +21,11 @@ from .mapper import INT_TO_FLOAT_MAPPER, FLOAT_TO_INT_MAPPER, MAP_TO_UNSLOTH_16b
 
 # https://github.com/huggingface/transformers/pull/26037 allows 4 bit loading!
 from packaging.version import Version
-from transformers import (
-    AutoModelForCausalLM,
-    AutoTokenizer,
-    TorchAoConfig,
-    __version__ as transformers_version,
-)
+from transformers import __version__ as transformers_version
 from unsloth.models._utils import TorchAOConfig
 from unsloth_zoo.utils import Version
 import torch
+import gc
 
 transformers_version = Version(transformers_version)
 SUPPORTS_FOURBIT = transformers_version >= Version("4.37")
@@ -205,19 +201,36 @@ def _offline_quantize_to_fp8(model_name: str, fp8_mode: str) -> str:
     )
 
     if not os.path.isdir(new_model_name):
+        from transformers import (
+            AutoModelForCausalLM,
+            AutoModelForImageTextToText,
+            AutoTokenizer,
+            AutoProcessor,
+            TorchAoConfig,
+            AutoConfig,
+        )
         qconfig = _get_torchao_fp8_config(fp8_mode)
         qconfig = TorchAoConfig(qconfig)
-        # TODO: generalize this to beyond text models?
-        # Right now using AutoModel removes the `lm_head` layer,
-        # which is expected later when loading the vllm state dict
-        model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
+        config = AutoConfig.from_pretrained(model_name)
+        is_vlm = any(
+            x.endswith(("ForConditionalGeneration", "ForVisionText2Text"))
+            for x in config.architectures
+        )
+        is_vlm = is_vlm or hasattr(config, "vision_config")
+        auto_model = AutoModelForImageTextToText if is_vlm else AutoModelForCausalLM
+        auto_processor = AutoProcessor if is_vlm else AutoTokenizer
+        model = auto_model.from_pretrained(
             model_name,
             torch_dtype = "auto",
             device_map = "auto",
             quantization_config = qconfig,
         )
-        tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_name)
+        tokenizer = auto_processor.from_pretrained(model_name)
         model.save_pretrained(new_model_name, safe_serialization = False)
+        del model
+        for _ in range(2):
+            torch.cuda.empty_cache()
+            gc.collect()
         tokenizer.save_pretrained(new_model_name)
     return new_model_name