It wasn’t until the morning that Hub71, the bustling startup accelerator in Abu Dhabi, staged a celebrity reveal for its showcase Impact event.

Splashing the news on social media on Tuesday, Hub71 announced that comedian Trevor Noah would appear onstage fresh from his appearance at Web Summit in Qatar on Monday.

Hub71’s annual Impact conference highlights emerging tech companies in the UAE ecosystem and provides opportunities for startup leaders to rub shoulders with investors.

Besides Noah and Idris Elba, the British actor, DJ and investor who was interviewed onstage by The Circuit’s Kelsey Warner, speakers at the two-day conference included Badr Al-Olama, Director General of the Abu Dhabi Investment Office; Ahmad Ali Alwan, CEO of Hub71; Eddy Farhat, Executive Director of e& Capital, and Nadine Mezher, Co-founder of the Sarwa investment platform.

Joe Kawkabani, CEO of OSN Group and Elie Habib, Co-founder of Anghami, also spoke to Warner onstage, the first public appearance for the media executives since announcing their merger in November.

More investors, corporate executives and government leaders will appear on Wednesday at the UAE’s Investopia conference on Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island.

Among the keynotes will be UAE Minister of the Economy Abdullah bin Touq Al Marri, Mubadala CEO Khaldoon Al Mubarak; Anthony Scaramucci, Founder and Managing Partner of SkyBridge and Eric Cantor, the former U.S. Congress Majority Leader and Vice Chairman of Moelis.