A little more than a year after joining the unicorn club, Auth0 Inc. today divulged that it has closed a $120 million late-stage round led by Salesforce.com Inc. at a $1.92 billion valuation.

Bellevue, Washington-based Auth0 sells cloud services that developers rely on to let users securely log into their applications. The startup’s services automate authentication and also handle related tasks such as detecting hacked login credentials. 

The identity management market in which Auth0 competes has many other players. One of the largest is Ping Identity Corp., which hit the stock market last year in a $188 million initial public offering. Developers are flocking to identity management services because using a tried-and-tested platform to handle user logins is simpler, as well as potentially more secure, than building a custom login system from scratch.

Auth0 ended 2019 with revenue up 70% year over year. In an interview with Seattle publication GeekWire, Auth0 Chief Executive Officer Eugenio Pace provided an update on the startup’s sales performance, saying it beat its second-quarter goals.

Auth0 has sought to set itself apart from rivals by making it easy for developers to integrate its identity management services into their applications. The process requires inserting a few lines of code into a project and takes as little as five minutes, according to the startup.

Developers can use Auth0 to build login portals, set up multifactor authentication for sensitive applications and filter malicious login attempts. The startup alerts customers if passwords belonging to their users are leaked in an external data breach. Auth0 also provides more specialized features, enabling companies to use its technology to authenticate machine-to-machine communications such as access requests that an application makes to a database.

Auth0 counts more than 9,000 customers worldwide. Among them are major enterprises such as Nvidia Corp., HarperCollins Publishers LLC and Schneider Electric SE.

“Nearly every app and service relies on secure authentication and seamless user experience,” Pace said  in a statement. “Our year-over-year growth is reflective of the persistent problem that our technology is solving.”

The startup will use the capital to continue expanding its go-to-market and product development activities. With an extra $120 million on its balance sheet, Auth0 also has more flexibility to make acquisitions to complement its in-house product development. The startup earlier this year acquired Apility.io to help it better detect malicious login attempts.  

In addition to Salesforce, the round saw the participation of about a half-dozen other investors, including Meritech Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Sapphire Ventures. Auth0 has raised more than $300 million to date. 

Image: Auth0