Co-creative AI represents a fundamental shift in how technology is conceived and built, positioning autistic and neurodiverse individuals not as passive beneficiaries but as essential contributors to innovation. By embedding neurodiverse cognition into problem framing, design, model development, and evaluation, AI systems become more empathetic, interpretable, and resilient—benefiting all users through clearer interfaces, reduced cognitive load, and fairer outcomes. Moving beyond accessibility checklists toward authentic collaboration unlocks cognitive diversity as a strategic advantage, preventing inequity from being hard-coded into systems that increasingly shape education, healthcare, employment, and social life. The path forward demands leadership commitment, ethical foresight, and sustained investment in neurodiverse talent pipelines and research ecosystems, ensuring technology evolves not merely to accommodate human diversity, but to be strengthened by it.