The AWS crash caused major issues for these $2000 smart beds

A major Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage this week didn’t just knock out apps and websites – it also left some people without a functioning bed.

Owners of Eight Sleep’s $2,000+ smart Pod mattress covers woke up to find their beds overheating, frozen upright, or completely unresponsive after AWS’s US-EAST-1 region went down early on October 20. The company’s high-end sleep systems rely on the cloud to control temperature and position, meaning no internet, no comfort.

By dawn, users took to X to vent about their late-night tech nightmare. One post from user Alex Browne joked, “Backend outage means I’m sleeping in a sauna,” after his Pod locked itself nine degrees above room temperature. Another user quipped that their bed was stuck “in an inclined position,” prompting Eight Sleep CEO Matteo Franceschetti to reply: “We are rolling out a fix as we speak.”

In an earlier post, Franceschetti apologized for the disruption, saying the outage “impacted some of our users since last night, disrupting their sleep,” and confirmed that the company was working 24/7 to build an ‘outage mode’ – a long-requested feature that would keep beds functional even if the cloud goes dark.

The AWS crash caused over eight million disruption reports, hitting major services from games to banking apps. But the Eight Sleep incident struck a particular nerve, highlighting how dependent modern smart home tech has become on cloud servers.

While AWS restored most systems by 6 a.m. ET, the night’s chaos served as a cautionary tale: when your mattress needs a connection to stay cool, even a short outage can turn bedtime into a blackout.

Fortunately for Eight Sleep users, the offline mode update has now been rolled out – and they can all sleep a little easier.