A number of Eight Sleep smart bed owners found themselves facing a very literal loss of sleep earlier this week when a massive Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage disrupted the cloud infrastructure that powers their high-end mattresses. What began as a widespread technical failure within Amazon’s servers on Monday cascaded into an unexpected and uncomfortable problem for users of Eight Sleep’s advanced, app-connected beds, which rely heavily on continuous internet connectivity to adjust temperature, elevation, and personalized comfort settings. Across social platforms like Reddit and X (formerly Twitter), frustrated customers reported that their expensive sleep systems had become unresponsive, leaving them trapped in awkward and often unbearable positions — some beds were lifted at odd angles, while others remained locked at uncomfortably sweltering temperatures through the night. Even The Verge’s senior reviewer, Victoria Song, was among the affected users, waking up to find her Eight Sleep Pod 4 visibly stuck upright due to the same outage that had thrown the company’s systems offline.
Eight Sleep’s CEO, Matteo Franceschetti, publicly acknowledged the disruption in a message posted to X on Tuesday morning. In his statement, he expressed regret for the inconvenience caused to users and emphasized that the unintended interruption had interfered directly with one of the company’s core promises — the delivery of smooth, uninterrupted, and optimized rest. “The AWS outage has impacted some of our users since last night, disrupting their sleep,” Franceschetti explained, before adding an earnest apology: “That is not the experience we want to provide, and I want to apologize for it.” His candid response signaled the company’s awareness of how deeply dependent its smart technology ecosystem has become on cloud integration and remote control features.
This dependency lies primarily in the fundamental design of Eight Sleep’s signature products, known as the “Pod” mattress systems. These models, which start at approximately $2,000 and can cost significantly more depending on size and configuration, are engineered to pair with a monthly Autopilot software subscription beginning at around $17. Through this subscription, the Pod’s app-based controls allow users to finely tune their sleeping environment — from minute temperature shifts to base elevation adjustments — all handled through Eight Sleep’s cloud platform. Yet this same reliance on online connectivity proved to be a double-edged sword: until recently, the system offered no means to modify settings when a network disruption occurred, leaving users without any way to locally correct an uncomfortable or malfunctioning configuration.
Recognizing the severity of the incident and the widespread frustration it generated, Eight Sleep responded swiftly by developing and deploying a crucial software update designed to mitigate the vulnerability exposed by the AWS outage. As spokesperson Nadine Hachicho explained in an interview with The Verge, the company began rolling out a new feature called “outage mode” just one day after the disruption. This update enables the Eight Sleep app to communicate directly with Pod devices over Bluetooth whenever cloud connectivity is unavailable, thereby allowing essential functions to operate offline. According to Hachicho, customers using outage mode will still be able to perform critical actions, such as powering their Pod on or off, adjusting temperature levels, and flattening the bed base, even in the absence of an active internet connection. In essence, the new feature adds a layer of resilience to the system — a safeguard that ensures user comfort and autonomy during unexpected service interruptions.
In the hours during and immediately following the AWS downtime, social media channels testified to the chaos that users experienced. One Reddit user vividly described discovering that one half of their bed had inexplicably heated itself to a scorching 110 degrees Fahrenheit and refused to cool down despite repeated attempts to adjust it. Another customer, replying to Franceschetti’s post on X, lamented that their bed had become frozen in an inclined position, making it nearly impossible to rest comfortably. A different Reddit commenter recounted a moment of confusion and panic in the early hours of the morning, sharing that they had awakened drenched in heat and frantically double-tapped their app’s interface in vain, expecting the usual haptic feedback that indicates a successful temperature change. Only later did they realize that their bed had been rendered inoperative by the widespread AWS failure. The same user criticized the design limitation, pointing out that while it might be acceptable for the Autopilot algorithms to stop functioning when the cloud is down, the inability to make even basic manual adjustments locally seemed, in their words, “completely unacceptable” for a product positioned at such a premium price point.
By Tuesday, Franceschetti reassured customers that all Eight Sleep devices had been fully restored to normal operation, confirming that “all systems are currently working again.” He also promised decisive and continuous action to prevent a recurrence, stating that the company’s teams would “work the whole night and 24/7 to build an outage mode” so that a solution could be implemented as rapidly as possible. His pledge underscored Eight Sleep’s recognition of the importance of redundancy and user control in connected home technology, especially in a market increasingly attuned to reliability concerns. It is worth noting that the absence of offline controls has been a long-standing complaint among users within the Eight Sleep community, with some customers having raised the issue repeatedly for years. The emergence of outage mode, therefore, not only addresses the immediate consequences of the recent AWS incident but also represents a long-overdue step toward ensuring that high-tech comfort does not crumble at the first sign of a network disruption.
Sourse: https://www.theverge.com/news/804289/eight-sleep-smart-bed-aws-outage-overheating-offline
