diff --git a/src/llama-ext.h b/src/llama-ext.h
index 348bbae957..e1d8034b75 100644
--- a/src/llama-ext.h
+++ b/src/llama-ext.h
@@ -124,3 +124,8 @@ LLAMA_API llama_context * llama_get_ctx_other(struct llama_context * ctx);
 LLAMA_API const int32_t * llama_model_target_layer_ids  (const struct llama_model * model);
 // returns the number of extracted layers from target model
 LLAMA_API uint32_t        llama_model_target_layer_ids_n(const struct llama_model * model);
+
+// retrieves the whole token embedding matrix in F32 format (n_embd x n_vocab)
+// returns total number of elements (usually n_embd * n_vocab) or 0 on error
+// if out is nullptr, returns the number of tokens without writing to out
+LLAMA_API uint32_t llama_model_get_tok_embd(const struct llama_model * model, float * out);
diff --git a/src/llama-model.cpp b/src/llama-model.cpp
index 68c4cbafd4..301a73a3fd 100644
--- a/src/llama-model.cpp
+++ b/src/llama-model.cpp
@@ -2847,3 +2847,38 @@ const int32_t * llama_model_target_layer_ids(const struct llama_model * model) {
 uint32_t llama_model_target_layer_ids_n(const struct llama_model * model) {
     return (uint32_t) model->target_layer_ids.size();
 }
+
+uint32_t llama_model_get_tok_embd(const struct llama_model * model, float * out) {
+    if (model->vocab.n_tokens() == 0 || model->tok_embd == nullptr) {
+        return 0;
+    }
+
+    const ggml_tensor * tensor = model->tok_embd;
+    const size_t nelements = ggml_nelements(tensor);
+    GGML_ASSERT(nelements <= UINT32_MAX); // for the return type
+
+    if (out == nullptr) {
+        return (uint32_t) nelements;
+    }
+
+    if (tensor->type == GGML_TYPE_F32) {
+        ggml_backend_tensor_get(tensor, out, 0, nelements * sizeof(float));
+        return (uint32_t) nelements;
+    }
+
+    std::vector<uint8_t> buf(ggml_nbytes(tensor));
+    ggml_backend_tensor_get(tensor, buf.data(), 0, buf.size());
+
+    const ggml_type_traits * traits = ggml_get_type_traits(tensor->type);
+    if (tensor->type == GGML_TYPE_F16) {
+        ggml_fp16_to_fp32_row((const ggml_fp16_t *) buf.data(), out, nelements);
+    } else if (tensor->type == GGML_TYPE_BF16) {
+        ggml_bf16_to_fp32_row((const ggml_bf16_t *) buf.data(), out, nelements);
+    } else if (ggml_is_quantized(tensor->type) && traits->to_float != nullptr) {
+        traits->to_float(buf.data(), out, nelements);
+    } else {
+        GGML_ABORT("unsupported tensor type for dequantization: %s", ggml_type_name(tensor->type));
+    }
+
+    return (uint32_t) nelements;
+}