Hot on the heels of rolling out its expanded partner program, Salt Security has raised $140 million in Series D funding, bringing its valuation to $1.4 billion.

CapitalG, Alphabet’s independent growth fund, led the Salt Security funding round with participation from all existing investors. The investment comes less than eight months after Salt Security raised its $70 million Series C funding round as demand for API security surges.

Salt Security will use the funding to expand R&D investment, fuel sales and marketing, and more rapidly grow its international operations.

This round brings the company’s total funding to $271 million.

Jon Peppler is Salt Security‘s vice president of worldwide channel sales.

Salt Security’s Jon Peppler

“This round allows Salt Security to invest heavily in its Salt Security Essential Partner Program,” he said. “Salt Security is a 100% channel-fulfilled company. With this investment, we are further increasing our channel resource investment by 10 times. This creates more opportunities for marketing with our partners to their customers and prospects. It allows Salt Security to continue its technical edge in being the leading solution in API security.”

More Marketing Means Faster Growth

With greater marketing, Salt Security‘s reach into the market will continue to rapidly grow, Peppler said.

“This in turn creates more opportunities to sell together to customers who greatly need Salt Security’s solutions,” he said. “This funding also creates new opportunities for partners in delivering services for their customers. With this funding, Salt Security will be adding essential elements such as formal sales and technical training, certifications and comprehensive lab environments for partners.”

Salt Security can continue investing in its solution offering, Peppler said. This will increase the “gap that already exists between what Salt Security offers and [what] the competitors are trying to achieve.”

“As a result of Salt Security investments into skills transfer, Salt Security’s partners can leverage their expertise to build services around API security, thus increasing their value to the market,” he said. “Customer satisfaction … leads to brand loyalty and faster growth. By investing across all elements of working with partners and customers, Salt Security and its partners will continue to bring the leading solution to market, thus creating a huge competitive advantage.”

In the past year, Salt Security added a number of customers in financial services, insurance, pharmaceutical, eCommerce/retail and digital services.