Smartbeds went rogue amid AWS outage – users stuck sweating, sitting, sleepless

When Amazon Web Services (AWS) went down recently, thousands of people lost more than just access to apps or online banking – they lost control of their smartbeds that rely entirely on cloud connectivity to manage temperature, position, and biometric data.

Specifically, owners of the Eight Sleep Pod, a high-end smartbed that costs up to $5,000 including its base and subscription, reported their devices going haywire as AWS’s US-EAST-1 cluster failed, with one customer on Reddit’s r/eightsleep subreddit stating that:

“So apparently, when my internet goes down, my bed decides to go on strike too. A quick outage, and boom – no change in sleep position available, not even with manual taps. (…) A clever way to remind me to stay ‘subscribed’? If so, maybe consider giving people a grace period before their $5,000 bed locks them into the world’s most ergonomic sitting position.”

A cloud outage leaves smartbed owners sweating and stuck upright

Another user pointed out that cloud-only design was “unacceptable,” adding that in 2025, there was “no reason an internet or AWS server outage should impact your entire customer base’s sleep – especially given the price tag of your product.”

Meanwhile, Eight Sleep CEO Matteo Franceschetti acknowledged the failure on X, apologizing to customers and promising to “outage-proof” the devices. Yet frustration mounted as more reports poured in of beds misbehaving hours later. ESPN host Victoria Arlen posted that her Pod was “still uncontrollable.”

One commenter on Reddit said that they were stuck sweating at heat level 5 because they couldn’t turn the pod down or off, and another opined that:

“When ES eventually goes bust, our pods will be bricked. The fact that the pods cannot be controlled when you don’t have the internet is diabolical. I wish I knew this before purchasing. This basically means in the possibly near future, all of our pods will be bricked.”

Some users even began jailbreaking their Pods via open-source tools like FreeSleep, which lets them bypass the company’s servers entirely.