diff --git a/common/speculative.cpp b/common/speculative.cpp
index 851a47b9a5..854a97b85a 100644
--- a/common/speculative.cpp
+++ b/common/speculative.cpp
@@ -2472,6 +2472,14 @@ common_params common_base_params_to_speculative(const common_params & params) {
         result.n_gpu_layers          = params_spec.n_gpu_layers;
         result.tensor_buft_overrides = params_spec.tensor_buft_overrides;
 
+        // a draft pinned to a single device doesn't need the meta wrapper an inherited -sm tensor would give it
+        // (the device list is null-terminated, so a single device means size 2)
+        const size_t n_devs = std::count_if(params_spec.devices.begin(), params_spec.devices.end(),
+                [](ggml_backend_dev_t d) { return d != nullptr; });
+        if (n_devs == 1) {
+            result.split_mode = LLAMA_SPLIT_MODE_LAYER;
+        }
+
         if (params_spec.cpuparams.n_threads > 0) {
             result.cpuparams.n_threads       = params_spec.cpuparams.n_threads;
             result.cpuparams_batch.n_threads = params_spec.cpuparams_batch.n_threads;