Abstract The 2021 IUPAC World Chemistry Leadership Meeting (WCLM) was more than a year in the making and it was quite a roller coaster ride. Originally planned as a traditional in-person meeting, the pandemic required that the entire IUPAC World Chemistry Congress (WCC) be held virtually. Rather than view this as a negative outcome, the WCLM organizers decided to leverage the situation as an unexpected opportunity to do something unique and innovative that would allow the session to reach a much larger portion of the global scientific community than is the norm at an in-person meeting. The meeting format was designed to stage not one plenary session, but four virtual sessions spread over 24h and covering three different time zones (vide infra). The topic, The Future of Chemistry in the World of Artificial Intelligence, was chosen because artificial intelligence (AI) has been receiving a lot of press— not only in the sciences, but across all industries [1]. In addition, AI was selected in 2020 by a panel of experts as one of IUPAC’s top ten emerging technologies in chemistry—one that will have major positive impacts on how research is conducted and the speed with which science is advanced [2].