diff --git a/backend/danswer/natural_language_processing/utils.py b/backend/danswer/natural_language_processing/utils.py
index 5c4bb7d5836..56631495a4e 100644
--- a/backend/danswer/natural_language_processing/utils.py
+++ b/backend/danswer/natural_language_processing/utils.py
@@ -111,6 +111,8 @@ def _check_tokenizer_cache(
 def _try_initialize_tokenizer(
     model_name: str, model_provider: EmbeddingProvider | None
 ) -> BaseTokenizer | None:
+    tokenizer: BaseTokenizer | None = None
+
     if model_provider is not None:
         # Try using TiktokenTokenizer first if model_provider exists
         try: