A major Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage caused an unexpected nightmare for some Eight Sleep Pod owners this week, as their $2,000 smart beds overheated and even got stuck in awkward sleeping positions during the night.
The incident took place on October 20, when AWS suffered a disruption in its US-EAST-1 region around 3 a.m. Eastern Time, reporting “increased error rates and latencies.” By mid-morning, millions of outage reports had been logged, affecting everything from apps and banking platforms to gaming services.
Eight Sleep’s products rely entirely on cloud connectivity to adjust temperature, track sleep, and control the water-cooled coils that regulate comfort. When AWS went down, the beds lost connection to the app that manages these features — leaving users stuck with their last active settings.
As a result, some smart beds overheated, while others stopped cooling altogether or became unresponsive.
One user, tech enthusiast Alex Browne, summed up the absurdity of the situation after his bed locked itself nine degrees above room temperature.
“Backend outage means I’m sleeping in a sauna,” he wrote. “Eight Sleep confirmed there’s no offline mode yet, but they’re working on it.”
Others reported their beds were stuck in an inclined or upright position, prompting demands for a backup mode that works without internet access.
Would be great if my bed wasn’t stuck in an inclined position due to an AWS outage. Cmon now
— Brandon (@Brandon25774008) October 21, 2025
Eight Sleep’s CEO, Matteo Franceschetti, responded quickly, saying the company would “work the whole night + 24/7 to build an outage mode so the problem will be fixed extremely quickly.”
AWS said normal operations were restored by around 6 a.m. ET, with most affected services coming back online shortly after.
