diff --git a/poetry.lock b/poetry.lock
index a857a9711..fe9e88ce9 100644
--- a/poetry.lock
+++ b/poetry.lock
@@ -3698,7 +3698,7 @@ url = "runtimes/catboost"
 
 [[package]]
 name = "mlserver-huggingface"
-version = "2.0.14"
+version = "2.0.16"
 description = "HuggingFace runtime for MLServer"
 optional = false
 python-versions = ">=3.9,<3.12"
@@ -3711,7 +3711,7 @@ bitsandbytes = "^0.42.0"
 mlserver = "*"
 optimum = {version = ">=1.4,<2.0", extras = ["onnxruntime"]}
 pillow = "*"
-pydantic = "2.7.1"
+pydantic = "^2.7.1"
 sentence-transformers = "2.5.1"
 tensorflow = "*"
 timm = "^1.0.13"
@@ -8614,4 +8614,4 @@ testing = ["coverage (>=5.0.3)", "zope.event", "zope.testing"]
 [metadata]
 lock-version = "2.0"
 python-versions = ">=3.9,<3.12"
-content-hash = "d03b8d726210caa2afdd46f7341a81d2b494f4cf59af47f58c7796a9aed36ed4"
+content-hash = "34460288962c20fc619916f7d25a5309c53957f619a72f4a00c0cc37028fba85"
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 52bf67b34..01dc738f4 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -62,8 +62,8 @@ gevent = "*"
 aiofiles = "*"
 orjson = "*"
 uvloop = {version = "*", markers = "sys_platform != 'win32' and (sys_platform != 'cygwin' and platform_python_implementation != 'PyPy')"}
-pydantic = "2.7.1"
-pydantic-settings = "2.2.1"
+pydantic = "^2.7.1"
+pydantic-settings = "^2.2.1"
 python-multipart = "*"
 h11 = "0.16.0"
 
diff --git a/runtimes/huggingface/mlserver_huggingface/version.py b/runtimes/huggingface/mlserver_huggingface/version.py
index 2ae493360..9aa3f9036 100644
--- a/runtimes/huggingface/mlserver_huggingface/version.py
+++ b/runtimes/huggingface/mlserver_huggingface/version.py
@@ -1 +1 @@
-__version__ = "2.0.14"
+__version__ = "2.1.0"
diff --git a/runtimes/huggingface/poetry.lock b/runtimes/huggingface/poetry.lock
index 5261e9c29..78d635e4f 100644
--- a/runtimes/huggingface/poetry.lock
+++ b/runtimes/huggingface/poetry.lock
@@ -1301,13 +1301,13 @@ protobuf = ["grpcio-tools (>=1.64.1)"]
 
 [[package]]
 name = "h11"
-version = "0.14.0"
+version = "0.16.0"
 description = "A pure-Python, bring-your-own-I/O implementation of HTTP/1.1"
 optional = false
-python-versions = ">=3.7"
+python-versions = ">=3.8"
 files = [
-    {file = "h11-0.14.0-py3-none-any.whl", hash = "sha256:e3fe4ac4b851c468cc8363d500db52c2ead036020723024a109d37346efaa761"},
-    {file = "h11-0.14.0.tar.gz", hash = "sha256:8f19fbbe99e72420ff35c00b27a34cb9937e902a8b810e2c88300c6f0a3b699d"},
+    {file = "h11-0.16.0-py3-none-any.whl", hash = "sha256:63cf8bbe7522de3bf65932fda1d9c2772064ffb3dae62d55932da54b31cb6c86"},
+    {file = "h11-0.16.0.tar.gz", hash = "sha256:4e35b956cf45792e4caa5885e69fba00bdbc6ffafbfa020300e549b208ee5ff1"},
 ]
 
 [[package]]
@@ -1714,6 +1714,7 @@ fastapi = ">=0.88.0,!=0.89.0,<=0.110.0"
 gevent = "*"
 geventhttpclient = "*"
 grpcio = "*"
+h11 = "0.16.0"
 importlib-resources = ">=5.12,<7.0"
 numpy = "*"
 opentelemetry-exporter-otlp-proto-grpc = "^1.22.0"
@@ -4737,4 +4738,4 @@ testing = ["coverage (>=5.0.3)", "zope.event", "zope.testing"]
 [metadata]
 lock-version = "2.0"
 python-versions = ">=3.9,<3.12"
-content-hash = "1fcd8127de0384b9c6be2767206e40e88737cb8b80a92153a33918c9479643dc"
+content-hash = "095e18b9d6074e2edbbcc75974358f60479d91b962be1a97f49aa2acce950475"
diff --git a/runtimes/huggingface/pyproject.toml b/runtimes/huggingface/pyproject.toml
index d9db173af..5e9c81dbb 100644
--- a/runtimes/huggingface/pyproject.toml
+++ b/runtimes/huggingface/pyproject.toml
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 [tool.poetry]
 name = "mlserver-huggingface"
-version = "2.0.15"
+version = "2.1.0"
 description = "HuggingFace runtime for MLServer"
 authors = ["Seldon Technologies Ltd. <hello@seldon.io>"]
 license = "Apache-2.0"
@@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ mlserver = "*"
 tensorflow = "*"
 pillow = "*"
 optimum = {extras = ["onnxruntime"], version = ">=1.4,<2.0"}
-pydantic = "2.7.1"
+pydantic = "^2.7.1"
 accelerate = "^0.27.2"
 bitsandbytes = "^0.42.0"
 sentence-transformers = "2.5.1"