diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 6af73eae62..d0c8d07b69 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -66,7 +66,7 @@ optional-dependencies.extra = [
   # litgpt.pretrain:
   "tensorboard>=2.14",
   "torchmetrics>=1.3.1",
-  "transformers>=4.48,<4.51",
+  "transformers>=4.51.3,<4.52",
   # litdata, only on non-Windows:
   "uvloop>=0.2; sys_platform!='win32'",
   # litgpt.data.prepare_slimpajama.py:
@@ -75,7 +75,6 @@ optional-dependencies.extra = [
 optional-dependencies.test = [
   "einops>=0.7",
   "protobuf>=4.23.4",
-  "pydantic>=2.11",
   "pytest>=8.1.1",
   "pytest-benchmark>=5.1",
   "pytest-dependency>=0.6",