Feb 24 (Reuters) - AI startup Anthropic is looking to raise $3.5 billion in its latest funding round which would value the startup behind the chatbot Claude at $61.5 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

Investors in the latest round include venture firms Lightspeed Venture Partners, General Catalyst and Bessemer Venture Partners, WSJ said. Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX is also in talks, according to the report.

Anthropic did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

In January, Reuters had reported the startup was nearing a deal to raise an additional $2 billion at a price that values the company at $60 billion, months after its $4 billion funding from Amazon AMZN.O.

Alphabet's GOOGL.O Google is making a fresh investment of more than $1 billion into the AI startup, the Financial Times had reported late last month. It already has an existing commitment of $2 billion in Anthropic.

Anthropic, a major competitor of OpenAI in the foundation model space, was valued at around $18 billion in a fundraise led by Menlo Ventures last year.

On Monday, Anthropic launched an advanced AI model, called Claude 3.7 Sonnet, that can produce faster responses or display its step-by-step reasoning process, as it looks to gain a competitive edge in the generative artificial intelligence industry.

(Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)

((Juby.Babu@thomsonreuters.com;))