Reply to Correspondence on “Unlocking the Chain‐Walking Process in Gold Catalysis”

Abstract We recently reported the gold‐catalyzed Heck and chain‐walking reactions, which utilize migratory insertion, β ‐hydride elimination steps in a catalytic fashion. Budzelaar et al. in their correspondence state that these reactions proceed through gold‐catalyzed alkene heteroarylation followed by acid‐mediated elimination and cyclization sequence. In response to this correspondence, we have conducted some experiments which convinced us that the product formation solely can not be rationalized based on hetero‐arylation of alkenes under ligand‐enabled Au(I)/Au(III) catalysis.