MudBlazor upgrade from 7 to 8 causes Mono runtime error

I have a Blazor application that is using .NET9 and MudBlazor 7. When I upgrade to version 8, I get the following in browser console:

[MONO] * Assertion at /__w/1/s/src/mono/mono/metadata/class-init.c:2967, condition `<disabled>' not met

and nothing displays in the browser.

I looked at various forums etc. but cannot figure out the source of this error or why it's happening. Application runs fine with MudBlazor version 7.

Any idea what that could be?