In recent years interestint he development of protocols that facilitate the oxidativea ddition of gold to access mild cross-coupling processes mediated by this metal hasincreased. In this context, we report herein that ascorbic acid, an atural and readily accessible antioxidant, can be used to accelerate the oxidative addition of aryldiazonium chlorides onto Au I .T he aryl-Au III speciesg enerated in this way,h as been used to prepare 3-arylindoles in ao ne-pot protocol startingf rom anilines and para-, meta-, and ortho-s ubstituted aryldiazonium chlorides. The mechanism underlying the oxidative addition has been examined in detail based on EPR analyses, cyclic voltammetry,a nd DFT calculations. Interestingly, we have found that in this protocol, the chloride atom induces the Au II /Au III oxidation step.