diff --git a/x-pack/plugin/ml/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/xpack/ml/inference/adaptiveallocations/AdaptiveAllocationsScalerService.java b/x-pack/plugin/ml/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/xpack/ml/inference/adaptiveallocations/AdaptiveAllocationsScalerService.java
index 1c3a73a409dd1..9624d619ff20a 100644
--- a/x-pack/plugin/ml/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/xpack/ml/inference/adaptiveallocations/AdaptiveAllocationsScalerService.java
+++ b/x-pack/plugin/ml/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/xpack/ml/inference/adaptiveallocations/AdaptiveAllocationsScalerService.java
@@ -433,7 +433,8 @@ private void processDeploymentStats(GetDeploymentStatsAction.Response statsRespo
     public boolean maybeStartAllocation(TrainedModelAssignment assignment) {
         if (assignment.getAdaptiveAllocationsSettings() != null
             && assignment.getAdaptiveAllocationsSettings().getEnabled() == Boolean.TRUE
-            && assignment.getAdaptiveAllocationsSettings().getMinNumberOfAllocations() == 0) {
+            && (assignment.getAdaptiveAllocationsSettings().getMinNumberOfAllocations() == null
+                || assignment.getAdaptiveAllocationsSettings().getMinNumberOfAllocations() == 0)) {
 
             // Prevent against a flurry of scale up requests.
             if (deploymentIdsWithInFlightScaleFromZeroRequests.contains(assignment.getDeploymentId()) == false) {