diff --git a/docker/Dockerfile b/docker/Dockerfile
index 9ccbe018..51efc6a9 100644
--- a/docker/Dockerfile
+++ b/docker/Dockerfile
@@ -118,6 +118,15 @@ RUN if [ "$TARGETARCH" = "amd64" ]; then \
 
 RUN /opt/venv/bin/pip install seam-carving==1.1.0
 
+# Install CUDA forward-compat stubs for build-time model downloads.
+# paddlepaddle-gpu needs libcuda.so.1 to import, but the real driver is
+# only injected at runtime by nvidia-container-toolkit. The compat package
+# provides a stub that satisfies the dlopen without a real GPU.
+RUN if [ "$TARGETARCH" = "amd64" ]; then \
+    apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends cuda-compat-12-6 && \
+    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* \
+; fi
+
 # Pre-download and verify all ML models
 COPY docker/download_models.py /tmp/download_models.py
 RUN /opt/venv/bin/python3 /tmp/download_models.py && rm -f /tmp/download_models.py