diff --git a/virtual/rust/metadata.xml b/virtual/rust/metadata.xml
index d7906a9ad75a7..999eaba04c299 100644
--- a/virtual/rust/metadata.xml
+++ b/virtual/rust/metadata.xml
@@ -14,6 +14,7 @@
 		<name>Rust Project</name>
 	</maintainer>
 	<use>
+		<flag name="profiler">Build the profiler runtime and rust-demangler tool (needed for '-C profile-generate' or '-C instrument-coverage' codegen opts)</flag>
 		<flag name="rustfmt">Install rustfmt, Rust code formatter</flag>
 	</use>
 	<stabilize-allarches/>
diff --git a/virtual/rust/rust-1.76.0.ebuild b/virtual/rust/rust-1.76.0.ebuild
index 208c9e6ba7a43..187391b932747 100644
--- a/virtual/rust/rust-1.76.0.ebuild
+++ b/virtual/rust/rust-1.76.0.ebuild
@@ -14,10 +14,10 @@ LICENSE=""
 # neither system nor bundled, so we just hardcode it here.
 SLOT="0/llvm-17"
 KEYWORDS="~amd64 ~arm ~arm64 ~loong ~ppc ~ppc64 ~riscv ~s390 ~sparc ~x86"
-IUSE="rustfmt"
+IUSE="rustfmt profiler"
 
 BDEPEND=""
 RDEPEND="|| (
-	~dev-lang/rust-bin-${PV}[rustfmt?,${MULTILIB_USEDEP}]
-	~dev-lang/rust-${PV}[rustfmt?,${MULTILIB_USEDEP}]
+	~dev-lang/rust-bin-${PV}[profiler?,rustfmt?,${MULTILIB_USEDEP}]
+	~dev-lang/rust-${PV}[profiler?,rustfmt?,${MULTILIB_USEDEP}]
 )"