diff --git a/tools/server/server.cpp b/tools/server/server.cpp
index 235ae4e8c0..8538427f73 100644
--- a/tools/server/server.cpp
+++ b/tools/server/server.cpp
@@ -73,8 +73,18 @@ int main(int argc, char ** argv, char ** envp) {
         return 1;
     }
 
+    // validate batch size for embeddings
+    // embeddings require all tokens to be processed in a single ubatch
+    // see https://github.com/ggml-org/llama.cpp/issues/12836
+    if (params.embedding && params.n_batch > params.n_ubatch) {
+        LOG_WRN("%s: embeddings enabled with n_batch (%d) > n_ubatch (%d)\n", __func__, params.n_batch, params.n_ubatch);
+        LOG_WRN("%s: setting n_batch = n_ubatch = %d to avoid assertion failure\n", __func__, params.n_ubatch);
+        params.n_batch = params.n_ubatch;
+    }
+
     if (params.n_parallel < 0) {
         LOG_INF("%s: n_parallel is set to auto, using n_parallel = 4 and kv_unified = true\n", __func__);
+
         params.n_parallel = 4;
         params.kv_unified = true;
     }