AWS Outage Leads to $2,000 Smart Beds Overheating and Stuck Upright

Significant AWS Outage Causes Sleepless Nights for Eight Sleep Users

On October 20, a substantial outage of Amazon Web Services (AWS) created unexpected turmoil within homes across the United States. Owners of Eight Sleep’s innovative $2, 000 Pod3 mattresses discovered that their smart beds lacked an offline mode, leading to excessively high temperatures and peculiar sleeping positions throughout the night.

The Outage Timeline

The disruption commenced around 3 AM ET when AWS reported “increased error rates and latencies”in its US-EAST-1 region. By the following morning, Downdetector had documented over eight million reports of service failures affecting various applications, games, and banking platforms.

Impact on Smart Beds

The Pod3 mattress by Eight Sleep is designed to connect to the cloud for temperature control and biometric data tracking. However, when AWS experienced downtime, users lost access to the accompanying app that regulates the mattress’s water-cooled coils. This left many with their last active settings, which resulted in overheating for some, while others found their beds unresponsive altogether.

The AWS outage has impacted some of our users since last night, disrupting their sleep. That is not the experience we want to provide, and I want to apologize for it. We are taking two main actions: 1) We are restoring all the features as AWS comes back. All devices are currently…

— Matteo Franceschetti (@m_franceschetti) October 20, 2025

User Experiences Highlight Outage Absurdity

One particularly viral post by tech enthusiast Alex Browne emphasized the comical yet frustrating situation. After his Pod3 locked itself at a temperature nine degrees above room temperature, he tweeted, “Backend outage means I’m sleeping in a sauna, ” further noting that Eight Sleep confirmed the absence of an offline mode but was working on a solution.

Other users shared their experiences, including one individual whose bed remained stuck in an inclined position.

We are rolling out a fix as we speak

— Matteo Franceschetti (@m_franceschetti) October 21, 2025

Calls for Offline Functionality

Concerns grew among users who described their mattresses as effectively “bricked” during the outage. Many demanded a fallback option to ensure functionality without an internet connection. This incident comes on the heels of previous scrutiny faced by Eight Sleep regarding security vulnerabilities, including a 2024 report that highlighted exposed AWS keys that could permit unauthorized access to customer devices.

Resolution and Company Commitment

AWS announced that normal operations were back online by approximately 6 AM ET, with most affected services restored shortly thereafter. In a subsequent statement, CEO Matteo Franceschetti pledged, “We will work the whole night + 24/7 to build an outage mode so the problem will be fixed extremely quickly.”

For those affected by this outage, it’s clear that the reliance on cloud connectivity for smart home devices raises pressing questions about the need for offline capabilities.

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