Asger Risom
Thousands of users of the Eight Sleep product couldn’t cool, flatten, or turn off their €9,000 beds after AWS went down.
Thousands of users of the Eight Sleep product couldn’t cool, flatten, or turn off their €9,000 beds after AWS went down.
When the cloud collapsed
Last week’s Amazon Web Services failure didn’t just hit banks and websites — it left people literally unable to sleep.
A quality bed gone wrong
Owners of Eight Sleep’s “Pod” smart beds woke up sweating or stuck upright as their devices stopped responding overnight.
Total reliance on the cloud
The beds depend entirely on AWS to process commands for heating, cooling, and posture adjustments through a mobile app.
What went wrong
A bug in Amazon’s DynamoDB service disrupted automatic DNS management, cutting devices off from their servers worldwide.
A very literal disconnect
Without cloud access, the beds couldn’t receive commands — some reached 43°C, others froze in uncomfortable angles, rendering an otherwise great system unusable.
Company response
Eight Sleep’s CEO apologized, admitting the AWS outage “disrupted users’ sleep” and promised a more resilient system.
The emergency fix
Within hours, the company launched an “offline mode” update that lets users control temperature and base settings via Bluetooth.
Limits of the backup
Basic functions returned, but advanced features like sleep tracking and personalized adjustments still depend on AWS servers.
Price versus reliability
The top Pod 4 Ultra model costs around €9,000 and requires a monthly subscription — a high price for a device that fails offline.
A growing pattern
Outages at Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have also frozen security cameras, thermostats, and robot vacuums in recent years.
Lessons for the smart home
Experts warn that total dependence on the cloud makes even the most high-end “smart” products fragile.
When your bed needs Wi-Fi to work
The incident shows how the connected home can fail in unexpected ways — and why real resilience starts with local control.
This article is made and published by Asger Risom, who may have used AI in the preparation
